tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-84111302017-11-29T12:31:28.621+00:00Sailom's PhilosophyDiscussing philosophical or scientific issues and their possible applications in politics. Monitoring daily world news headlines and commenting them.Sailomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18002477996069582527noreply@blogger.comBlogger369125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8411130.post-28575609792917041262007-12-01T20:42:00.000+00:002007-12-01T22:15:03.266+00:00Philosophy of life: Being awareI feel like writing about philosophy again!<br />I think I have a different perspective from the one I used to have and I probably have a different approach as well.<br /><br />A few concepts drive my own philosophy of life:<br />Every living being gets wiser by being aware of:<br />1. Limitations of a life time (time limits)<br />2. Limitations of a perspective (limited space perception).<br /><br />1.1. Limitations of a lifetime may be an absolute one:<br />Awareness of aging, awareness of death translate into an "absolute" feeling that time is priceless and every lifetime is essentially unique<br /><br />1.2. Limitations of a lifetime may be relative to the (known) history and expected future of the universe.<br />It may give a feeling of being "stuck" in a century. It may be a feeling of frustration of not understanding who were our ancestors. Were they racist bigots? Were they courageous hard-working people?<br />It may be a feeling of frustration of not knowing what the future will be for the children of our children... Would they have a tough life, experiencing natural disasters and nuclear wars? Would they have an amazing long life in a peaceful prosperous society, enjoying advanced technology and traveling around the solar system?<br /><br />2.1. Limitations of perspective related to the size of the world<br />We are only seeing and hearing events that we are witnessing. Needless to say we cannot possibly witness all the events experienced by billions of people.<br /><br />2.2. Limitations of perspective related to the size of the universe<br />We are only living in a small area on a tiny rock (called planet) located in a single solar system... located in a single galaxy... etc.<br /><br /><br />This awareness could be a cause of despair of being such an ignorant, insignificant, fragile living being.<br />However, here is the paradox:<br /><br />We are able, as a person, to gain confidence with the thought that:<br />1. As time is priceless, we have no choice but using it properly by "leading a good life"<br />2. We have the free will to choose what it means to lead a good life<br />3. We may be insignificant yet we are extremely important to our partner, family, friends, colleagues. The things we do have an impact on them.<br /><br />In other words, our time/space limitations should make us aware that we should make the best use of the present time to lead a good life with the few people for whom we matter.<br /><br />This statement sounds like a "moral imperative" (what should we do?)<br />Yet I could equally ask:<br />Being aware of our time/space limitations, what can we know?<br /><br />For the same reason, we are able to gain confidence with the thought that:<br />1. We can know ourself better than anyone else<br />2. Thanks to our own unique education background, experience and skills, we can specialize in what we do best. Our knowledge becomes useful to our colleagues, our community etc.<br /><br />To summarize all these ideas, every living being becomes wiser by acknowledging space/time limitations. These limitations is not a reason for despair but a strong incentive to make sense of our lifetime because we have a significant role to play. We can improve our living condition. We also have an impact in the lives of those around us. We can know a few things better than others because of our unique background and perspective.<br /><br />Yet these limitations are the reason why I don't see philosophy as ideas that work for anyone and will work for every generations!<br />i can only conclude that this is "my" philosophy of life.<br />For the same reasons, I also have deep skepticism for religions and political ideologies. It is very unlikely that any "thinker" or "guru" may overcome these space/time limitations and become someone able to advise anyone's lifestyle.<br /><br />SailomSailomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18002477996069582527noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8411130.post-51995425231923833132007-11-16T21:41:00.000+00:002007-11-16T21:49:18.173+00:00US network uncovers 'suicide epidemic' among US veterans - AFPHidden casualties of the war to be added to the official body count... with all the civilian casualties.<br />Should we mention again to Bush that there were no WMDs in Iraq?<br /><br />Sailom<br /><br /><br /><br />http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5jUtHzz80dkhT-nkIIbI4nsXXPGEw<br /><br /><p>NEW YORK (AFP) — The US military is experiencing a "suicide epidemic" with veterans killing themselves at the rate of 120 a week, according to an investigation by US television network CBS.</p> <p>At least 6,256 US veterans committed suicide in 2005 -- an average of 17 a day -- the network reported, with veterans overall more than twice as likely to take their own lives as the rest of the general population.</p> <p>While the suicide rate among the general population was 8.9 per 100,000, the level among veterans was between 18.7 and 20.8 per 100,000.</p> <p>That figure rose to 22.9 to 31.9 suicides per 100,000 among veterans aged 20 to 24 -- almost four times the non-veteran average for the age group.</p> <p>"Those numbers clearly show an epidemic of mental health problems," CBS quoted veterans' rights advocate Paul Sullivan as saying.</p> <p>CBS quoted the father of a 23-year-old soldier who shot himself in 2005 as saying the military did not want the true scale of the problem to be known.</p> <p>"Nobody wants to tally it up in the form of a government total," Mike Bowman said. "They don't want the true numbers of casualties to really be known."</p> <p>There are 25 million veterans in the United States, 1.6 million of whom served in Afghanistan and Iraq, according to CBS.</p> <p>"Not everyone comes home from the war wounded, but the bottom line is nobody comes home unchanged," Paul Rieckhoff, a former Marine and founder of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans for America told the network.</p> <p>CBS said it was the first time that a nationwide count of veteran suicides had been conducted. The tally was reached by collating suicide data from individual states for both veterans and the general population from 1995.</p> <p>The Department of Veterans Affairs spends some three billion dollars a year on mental health services, according to CBS.</p>Sailomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18002477996069582527noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8411130.post-16217417774017039642007-09-29T11:01:00.000+00:002007-09-29T11:29:48.570+00:00Why non-violence can be successful in BurmaA couple of technological revolutions may potentially transform the seemingly hopeless struggle of peaceful monks vs the military into an efficient worldwide campaign for democracy.<br /><br />Yet, the situation looks hopeless. By shutting down the internet, the country is effectively closed to the rest of the world.<br /><br />If only Western, Russian and Chinese businesses could pull out of the country, the junta would eventually give more power to the people.<br /><br />The Burmese government is more in trouble than it seems.<br /><br />They will need to restore some basic internet services at some point. Just like anywhere in the world, the country's administration and businesses need the internet.<br /><br />Beside, even a military government can't jail thousands of monks. Those monks are a central part of the Burmese society.<br /><br />SailomSailomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18002477996069582527noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8411130.post-9248501021758262902007-09-25T20:05:00.000+00:002007-09-25T20:09:20.083+00:00Monks vs. militaryThe situation is unprecedented. Burma is a traditional society where Buddhist monks are highly respected.<br /><br />Sailom<br /><br />http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/StoryPage.aspx?id=23272343-cafd-4246-9907-b90f046747de&amp;&amp;Headline=Monks+vs+military<br /><br /><b><span>Hindustan Times</span></b><div class="nidate"><span class="ashadds"> September 26, 2007</span></div><div class="storydatetime"><div class="firstpublished"><span></span><span class="ashadds">First Published: </span><span>00:52 IST(26/9/2007)</span></div><div class="lastupdated"><span class="ashadds">Last Updated: </span><span>00:58 IST(26/9/2007)</span></div></div> <!-- VIN: End of InfoBox --> <!--Start of animated box--> <table class="animatedbox" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="47%"><tbody><tr><td colspan="3" align="left" valign="top" width="100%"><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%"><tbody><tr><td align="left" valign="top"><img src="http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/images/DropShadow_TopLeft.gif" height="4" width="4" /></td><td class="dropshadowtop" align="center" valign="top" width="100%"><br /></td><td align="left" valign="top"><img src="http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/images/DropShadow_TopRight.gif" alt="" height="4" width="4" /></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr><tr><td class="dropshadowleft" align="left" valign="top"> </td><td width="100%"><table border="0" width="100%"> <tbody><tr> <td width="100%"><div class="animcol1"> <div class="animimages"> <img src="http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/Images/print_icon.gif" style="border-width: 0px;" /> </div><div class="animimages"> <img src="http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/Images/mail_icon.gif" style="border-width: 0px;" /> </div> </div><div class="animcol2"> <div class="animtxt"> <a href="http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/Print.aspx?Id=23272343-cafd-4246-9907-b90f046747de">Print </a> </div><div class="animtxt"> <a href="mailto:?Subject=Monks%20vs%20military&amp;Body=Hi,%20I%20saw%20this%20article%20on%20HindustanTimes,%20and%20thought%20you%20would%20find%20it%20interesting.%20You%20can%20find%20it%20at:%20http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/StoryPage.aspx?id=23272343-cafd-4246-9907-b90f046747de&amp;&amp;Headline=Monks+vs+military">Email </a> </div><div class="animtxt"> </div> </div><div class="animcol3"> <div class="animimages"> <img src="http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/Images/add_icon.gif" style="border-width: 0px;" /> </div><div class="animimages"> <img src="http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/Images/print_icon.gif" style="border-width: 0px;" /> </div> </div><div class="animcol4"> <div class="animtxt"> <a href="javascript:imStory('', 'http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/StoryPage.aspx?id=23272343-cafd-4246-9907-b90f046747de&&Headline=Monks+vs+military ')">IM on Yahoo </a> </div><div class="animtxt"> <a href="http://del.icio.us/login/?url=http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/StoryPage.aspx?id=23272343-cafd-4246-9907-b90f046747de&amp;&amp;Headline=Monks+vs+military&amp;Title=Monks%20vs%20military">Add to Del.icio.us</a> </div><div class="animtxt"> </div> </div></td> </tr> </tbody></table></td><td class="dropshadowright" align="right" valign="top"> </td></tr><tr><td colspan="3" align="left" valign="top"><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%"><tbody><tr><td align="left" valign="top"><img src="http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/images/DropShadow_BotLeft.gif" alt="" height="4" width="4" /></td><td class="dropshadowbottom" align="left" valign="top" width="100%"><br /></td><td colspan="2" align="left" valign="top"><img src="http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/images/DropShadow_BotRight.gif" alt="" height="4" width="4" /></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table> <!-- ANIMATED MARKETING MODULE ENDS --><!--End of top module--> <!--Start of the story--> <div class="ni" id="mainstory2"> <!-- VIN: Start of actual news body --> It is not easy for even the most ruthless of dictators to put down anti-government demonstrations when the protestors happen to be bare-footed monks armed with begging bowls. This is what’s happening in Myanmar as monks march across the country in a frontal challenge to the ruling military regime, which seems to be at its wit’s end to come up with an effective response. The pro-democracy protests began last month as the government abruptly hiked fuel prices, pushing up transport fares that triggered a sharp rise in the price of consumer goods. Although activists and members of the main opposition party initially led the protests, monks, nuns and the public soon joined them, denouncing the military rule.<br /><br />Such public defiance has not been seen for nearly 20 years as the generals usually adopt a zero-tolerance policy towards the slightest criticism. This suggests that Myanmar’s military masters thought the protestors’ momentum would eventually die down. The protests, however, appear to be growing shriller by the day across the country and the big question is whether they will eventually fizzle out, or if this really marks the beginning of the end for khaki rule in Myanmar. The crisis could be coming to a head soon, going by the generals’ reported threat to act against the monks if they don’t end the protests. Painful memories of 1988 still linger, when a similar uprising for restoring democracy was crushed, killing nearly 3,000 people. Later, when Aung San Suu Kyi won the election (which the military expected her to lose), she was prevented from assuming the presidency and put under house arrest.<br /><br />Her courage in confronting the military and choosing to remain in captivity since then may just have a happy ending if this time round, the sheer number of monks — who occupy a revered place in a profoundly devout society — deters junior ranks of the army from executing the junta’s orders. And since this coincides with the UNGA meeting in New York, it’s also possible that the threat of more international sanctions against the military regime could prove to be the tipping time for Myanmar.</div>Sailomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18002477996069582527noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8411130.post-22138399691819083112007-09-16T08:56:00.000+00:002007-09-16T08:58:11.854+00:00Hungry bears plague US west after record drought - AFPhttp://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5jjLRRc44WcREtFYHm07Fhzi4y4sg<br /><p class="byline"> <span class="date">15-sep-2007<br /> </span> </p> <p> DENVER, United States (AFP) — They hosed the black bear with water, threw things at it and yelled, but the stubborn animal refused to move from its perch in a tree above a quiet neighborhood in Boulder, Colorado.</p><p>Pushed from their homelands by a drought and pulled by the scent of human food, black bears across western US states are breaking into homes and tearing up garbage cans in a desperate search for nourishment ahead of hibernation.</p><p>Fires across the west also destroyed bear habitat, and the animals face the continuing peril of losing their living space to urban development.</p><p>The bear in the Boulder neighborhood finally came down from the tree and fled. The animal was lucky -- it wore an ear tag, meaning a previous run in with authorities.</p><p>Authorities would have killed the bear if they had caught it, said Tyler Baskfield, spokesman for the Colorado Division of Wildlife.</p><p>This year is on target for approaching the 2002 record of 404 bears killed or euthanized, Baskfield said. Colorado has a population of between 8,000 and 12,000 bears.</p><p>"We had a late freeze in June which killed the acorns and berry crop. We had a very dry mid-summer and grasses in the high country dried up. That pushed the bears down into the valleys where we have people," Baskfield said.</p><p>It is a similar story in much of the western United States.</p><p>"Just everybody is seeing bears everywhere. That's the unusual part of it -- in places where they haven't been seen before," said state of Idaho Fish and Game wildlife biologist Bret Stansberry.</p><p>"It's a fairly severe drought and that's essentially the root of the problem. There is very little natural food for them to eat. They're coming into orchards, getting into apple trees," Stansberry said.</p><p>Adult male black bears, which weigh between 68 and 160 kilos (150 and 350 pounds), usually eat for up to 20 hours a day just before hibernation in November.</p><p>State wildlife agencies are constantly urge residents to use bear-proof garbage cans and make sure no food is left outdoors, with mixed results.</p><p>Chris Healy, spokesman for the state of Nevada Department of Wildlife, said bears are posing increasing problems. "We had one up a tree today near the university," he said.</p><p>Any area that has trees and shrubs resembles a bear's natural habitat, and when the bear spots a human it usually flees up a tree, Healy said.</p><p>Nevada has a small population of black bears, mostly concentrated in the Lake Tahoe region near the California border.</p><p>"In Tahoe people are not taking care of their garbage. Once the bears start breaking into houses it's a danger to humans," Healy said.</p><p>Bear attacks on people are rare, although there was a fatal attack in July when a bear dragged an 11 year-old boy out of his tent during a camping trip in the state of Utah.</p><p>Bears are causing plenty of trouble in California, said the state's Department of Fish and Game wildlife biologist Jason Holley.</p><p>"They can blow the door off the hinges. This time of year we're having at least three break-ins a night around Lake Tahoe," Holley said.</p><p>Eating human food such as donuts, hamburgers, or ice cream fattens the bears up and allows them to have more cubs. "We're developing an alarming trend -- ten percent are not hibernating," Holley said.</p><p>Black bears in California have not faced competition from their natural rival, the larger grizzly bear, for nearly a century. The last known grizzly in California was shot dead in 1922. California however still has a grizzly bear on its state flag.</p><p>There are about 30,000 black bears in California today, up from 12,500 bears 12 years ago, Holley said.</p><p>In Montana, a non-profit group has come up with an original way to chase bears away from camping areas.</p><p>The Wind River Bear Institute trains Karelian dogs, a species from northern Europe, to use their scent to detect bears, program biologist Russ Talmo said. "The dogs are barking, we're yelling at the bears, we use noisemakers," Talmo said. The dogs, which resemble huskies, are nimble and can herd a bear away from the area, although the dogs are always close to humans. </p>Sailomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18002477996069582527noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8411130.post-85732877039247413122007-09-05T19:13:00.000+00:002007-09-05T19:16:20.909+00:00Ice-free Arctic could be here in 23 years - The Guardian<span style="font-size:78%;">http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/sep/05/climatechange.sciencenews</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-style: italic;"> David Adam, environment correspondent</span></span><br /><p class="drop">The Arctic ice cap has collapsed at an unprecedented rate this summer and levels of sea ice in the region now stand at a record low, scientists said last night. Experts said they were "stunned" by the loss of ice, with an area almost twice as big as Britain disappearing in the last week alone. So much ice has melted this summer that the north-west passage across the top of Canada is fully navigable, and observers say the north-east passage along Russia's Arctic coast could open later this month. If the increased rate of melting continues, the summertime Arctic could be totally free of ice by 2030.</p><p>Mark Serreze, an Arctic specialist at the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre at Colorado University in Denver which released the figures, said: "It's amazing. It's simply fallen off a cliff and we're still losing ice." The Arctic has now lost about a third of its ice since satellite measurements began 30 years ago, and the rate of loss has accelerated sharply since 2002.</p><p>Dr Serreze said: "If you asked me a couple of years ago when the Arctic could lose all of its ice, then I would have said 2100, or 2070 maybe. But now I think that 2030 is a reasonable estimate. It seems that the Arctic is going to be a very different place within our lifetimes, and certainly within our children's lifetimes."</p><p>The new figures show that sea ice extent is currently down to 4.4m square kilometres (1.7m square miles) and still falling. The previous record low was 5.3m square kilometres in September 2005. From 1979 to 2000 the average sea ice extent was 7.7m square kilometres. The minimum extent of sea ice usually occurs late in September each year, as the freezing Arctic winter begins to bite.</p><p>The sea ice usually then begins to freeze again over the winter. But Dr Serreze said that would be difficult this year. "This summer we've got all this open water and added heat going into the ocean. That is going to make it much harder for the ice to grow back. What we've seen this year sets us up for an even worse year next year." The winter ice has already failed to make up for increased losses in the summer in each of the last two years.</p><p>Changes in wind and ocean circulation patterns can help reduce sea ice extent, but Dr Serreze said the main culprit was man-made global warming. "The rules are starting to change and what's changing the rules is the input of greenhouse gases. This year puts the exclamation mark on a series of record lows that tell us something is happening."</p><p>The dramatic loss is further bad news for the region's wildlife which relies on the sea ice, such as polar bears. The animals use its coastal fringes to find food, and as the summer ice retreats to the north, they must swim further to hunt for seals. Some colonies of bears have already showed signs of malnutrition and biologists say there could be a severe drop in their population within a few decades, though they may not go extinct.</p><p>Yesterday's announcement will also increase political interest in the Arctic, with a number of countries currently jostling to exploit the oil and gas reserves believed to lie under the ocean, which could become more accessible as the icy cover retreats. Last month Russia claimed a huge area around the north pole, and Denmark and Canada are preparing similar claims, which rely on showing that a chain of underwater mountains that runs across the region are connected to their respective continental shelves.</p>Sailomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18002477996069582527noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8411130.post-12530312913460390442007-08-26T20:18:00.000+00:002007-08-26T20:21:00.233+00:00Huge Hole Found in the Universe - space.com<a href="http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/070823_huge_hole.html">http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/070823_huge_hole.html</a><br /><br /> By <a href="http://www.space.com/php/contactus/feedback.php?r=rb">Robert Roy Britt</a><br />Senior Science Writer<br />posted: 23 August 200705:21 pm ET<a name="beginstory"></a><br /><br />The universe has a huge hole in it that dwarfs anything else of its kind. The discovery caught astronomers by surprise.<br /><br />The hole is nearly a billion light-years across. It is not a black hole, which is a small sphere of densely packed matter. Rather, this one is mostly devoid of stars, gas and other normal matter, and it's also strangely empty of the mysterious "<a href="http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/070820_mm_dark_forces.html">dark matter</a>" that permeates the cosmos. Other space voids have been found before, but nothing on this scale.<br /><br />Astronomers don't know why the hole is there.<br /><br />"Not only has no one ever found a void this big, but we never even expected to find one <a href="http://www.space.com/php/multimedia/imagedisplay/img_display.php?pic=070823_huge_hole_02.jpg&cap=Illustration+of+the+effect+of+matter+on+the+cosmic+microwave+background+(CMB).+On+the+right,+the+CMB+is+released+shortly+after+the+Big+Bang,+with+tiny+ripples+in+temperature+due+to+fluctuations+in+the+early+universe.+As+the+radiation+traverses+the+universe,+it+experiences+slight+perturbations.+In+the+direction+of+the+giant+newly-discovered+void,+the+WMAP+satellite+(top+left)+sees+a+cold+spot,+while+the+VLA+(bottom+left)+sees+fewer+radio-emitting+galaxies.+CREDIT%3A+Bill+Saxton,+NRAO/AUI/NSF,+NASA">this size</a>," said researcher Lawrence Rudnick of the University of Minnesota.<br />Rudnick's colleague Liliya R. Williams also had not anticipated this finding.<br />"What we've found is not normal, based on either observational studies or on computer simulations of the large-scale evolution of the universe," said Williams, also of the University of Minnesota.<br /><br />The finding will be detailed in the Astrophysical Journal.<br /><br />The universe is populated with visible stars, gas and dust, but most of the matter in the universe is invisible. Scientists know something is there, because they can measure the gravitational effects of the so-called dark matter. Voids exist, but they are typically relatively small.<br /><br />The <a href="http://www.space.com/php/multimedia/imagedisplay/img_display.php?pic=070823_huge_hole_02.jpg&amp;cap=Illustration+of+the+effect+of+matter+on+the+cosmic+microwave+background+(CMB).+On+the+right,+the+CMB+is+released+shortly+after+the+Big+Bang,+with+tiny+ripples+in+temperature+due+to+fluctuations+in+the+early+universe.+As+the+radiation+traverses+the+universe,+it+experiences+slight+perturbations.+In+the+direction+of+the+giant+newly-discovered+void,+the+WMAP+satellite+(top+left)+sees+a+cold+spot,+while+the+VLA+(bottom+left)+sees+fewer+radio-emitting+galaxies.+CREDIT%3A+Bill+Saxton,+NRAO/AUI/NSF,+NASA">gargantuan hole</a> was found by examining observations made using the Very Large Array (VLA) radio telescope, funded by the National Science Foundation.<br /><br />There is a "remarkable drop in the number of galaxies" in a region of sky in the constellation Eridanus, Rudnick said.<br /><br />The region had been previously been dubbed the "WMAP Cold Spot," because it stood out in a map of the <a href="http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/map_discovery_030211.html">Cosmic Microwave Background</a> (CMB) radiation made by NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotopy Probe (WMAP) satellite. The CMB is an imprint of radiation left from the Big Bang, the theoretical beginning of the universe.<br /><br />"Although our surprising results need independent confirmation, the slightly colder temperature of the CMB in this region appears to be caused by a huge hole devoid of nearly all matter roughly 6 to 10 billion light-years from Earth," Rudnick said.<br /><br />Photons of the CMB gain a small amount of energy when they pass through normal regions of space with matter, the researchers explained. But when the CMB passes through a void, the photons lose energy, making the CMB from that part of the sky appear cooler.Sailomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18002477996069582527noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8411130.post-76700797718227378742007-07-21T09:29:00.000+00:002007-07-21T09:31:37.861+00:00Martian Dust Storms Engulf Planet - space.com<a href="http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/070720_mars_global_storm.html">http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/070720_mars_global_storm.html</a><br /><br />By <a href="http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/dmosher@imaginova.com">Dave Mosher</a><br />Staff Writer<br /><br />posted: 20 July 2007<br />08:17 am ET<a name="beginstory"></a><br />Updated at 12:03 pm Eastern<br />Editor's Note: In a newer story, NASA officials discuss the possibility of the <a href="http://www.space.com/news/070720_rover_dust.html">end to the rover mission</a>.<br /><br />The surface of Mars is now obscured by a globe-engulfing veil of dust, posing a potentially longer-lasting threat to NASA's twin surface <a href="http://www.space.com/marsrover/">rovers</a>.<br /><br />Massive regional storms have been whipping up dust on the red planet since late June. Now, they've combined to create a "planet-encircling veil of dust," according to a statement from Malin Space Science Systems (MSSS), which operates a camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter for NASA.<br /><br />"The dust raised by these individual storms has obscured most of the planet over the past few weeks," the release stated.<br /><br />A <a href="http://www.space.com/php/multimedia/imagedisplay/img_display.php?pic=070720_dust_comp_04.jpg%E2%88%A9=Since+late+June+2007%2C+Mars+has+been+having+a+series+of+regional+dust+storms%2C+which+have+obscured+most+of+the+planet--and+the+Mars+rovers--with+dust.+The+Mars+Reconnaissance+Orbiter+image+from+June+22%2C+2007+%28top%29+shows+the+first+in+the+series+of+storms.+The+July+17%2C+2007+image+%28bottom%29+shows+a+global+%22veil+of+dust%22+encircling+the+planet.+Credit%3A+NASA%2FJPL%2FMalin+Space+Science+Systems">series of images</a> shows how the regional storms, which covered about 10 million square miles (25.9 million square kilometers) two weeks ago, have lifted enough dust to blot out the surface of the red planet.<br /><br /><strong>Sun-obscured explorers</strong><br /><br />The Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity weathered the regional storms by cutting back their activity, but the global dust event may escalate <a href="http://www.space.com/news/070705_dusty_rovers.html">danger to the rovers</a> that depend on sunlight to survive the bone-chilling cold of the planet.<br /><br />Steve Squyres of Cornell University, who is the lead scientist of the Mars Exploration Rover Project, said earlier this week that the dust levels are some of the worst the rover team has seen.<br /><br />"To give you a sense of the 'thickness' of the dust, the brightness of the sun as viewed from the surface is now down to less than 5 percent of what it would be with a perfectly transparent atmosphere," Squyres told SPACE.com. "Of course, Mars never has a perfectly transparent atmosphere, but the sun is still very faint."<br /><br />The saving grace for the rovers, however, is that the dust creates a glow of indirect sunlight. The effect is <a href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&amp;q=mars+earth+weather+site%3Awww.space.com&amp;btnG=Search">similar to Earth's</a> cloudy weather, which blocks the sun but does not completely prevent light from reaching the ground.<br /><br />"Even if it's cloudy enough that the sun is obscured completely, it's not pitch black out," Squyres said. "The sunlight gets scattered through the clouds. Same thing with the dust clouds on Mars."<br />Sleeping it out<br /><br />Despite the trickle of sunlight, the thick haze of red dust is gobbling up most of the rovers' solar power, Squyres said. As of Monday Spirit and Opportunity were "both actively doing science" near their respective sites at Gusev Crater and Meridiani Planum, but are now in an energy-conserving "sleep" mode.<br /><br />"Rather than doing science, we're focused right now on conserving power and waiting for conditions to improve," Squyres said. If the rovers expend too much energy, they may be unable to warm their electronics and prevent circuit-snapping temperatures.<br /><br />"One side benefit of the high winds that have caused <a href="http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/070711_mars_dust.html">this dust storm</a> is that they have done a wonderful job of removing dust from the solar arrays on both rovers," he said, going so far as to say that Opportunity's solar panels are cleaner than they were just months after landing in 2004.<br /><br />Still, Squyres noted that energy collected by the rovers' solar panels is about one-third of the level the first generated, so their activity is limited-and may be limited for months.<br /><br />Mars mission specialists have said the storms, <a href="http://www.space.com/news/070627_mars_storm.html">first reported</a> by SPACE.com, could become the worst since Mars was entirely enshrouded by dust in January of 2001. But the science of predicting martian weather is in its infancy, so uncertainty has been the only constant these past several weeks.<br /><br />"As with previous large dust-raising events on Mars, once the active storms die down, many weeks to months will pass before the dust settles out and the atmosphere clears," the Malin scientists said in their latest assessment.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.space.com/php/video/player.php?video_id=060707Rovers_end">VIDEO: Mars Rover Team Ponders Mission's End</a><br /><a href="http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/070711_tw_mars_spaceflight.html">Future Mars Explorers Face Dusty Challenges</a><br /><a href="http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/060703_wild_weather_top10.html">The Wildest Weather in the Galaxy</a>Sailomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18002477996069582527noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8411130.post-40455731004737009862007-07-01T08:04:00.000+00:002007-07-01T08:05:56.417+00:00Nasa readies for asteroid mission - space.comhttp://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6247222.stm<br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><div> <img src="http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/42434000/jpg/_42434424_dawn_nasaucla_203.jpg" alt="Artist's impression of Dawn spacecraft Image: Nasa/UCLA" border="0" height="152" hspace="0" vspace="0" width="203" /> <div class="cap">The Dawn spacecraft is scheduled for launch in July</div> </div></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><b>A Nasa spacecraft set for launch early next month will explore the two biggest asteroids in the Solar System.</b> </span><p> <span style="font-size:85%;">Asteroids are believed to be the building blocks of planets - primordial relics left over from the formation of the Solar System 4.6 billion years ago. </span></p><p> <span style="font-size:85%;">The Dawn mission will launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida on 7 July, on a mission to study the asteroids Ceres and Vesta. </span></p><p> <span style="font-size:85%;">Dawn will reach Vesta in 2011 before going on to visit Ceres in 2015. <!-- E SF --> </span></p><p> <span style="font-size:85%;"> <!-- S IBOX --> <table align="right" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="208"> <tbody><tr> <td width="5"><img src="http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/shared/img/o.gif" alt="" border="0" height="1" hspace="0" vspace="0" width="5" /></td> <td class="sibtbg"> <div> <div class="mva"> <img src="http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/img/v3/start_quote_rb.gif" alt="" border="0" height="13" width="24" /> <b>We're going back in time to the early Solar System</b> <img src="http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/img/v3/end_quote_rb.gif" alt="" align="right" border="0" height="13" vspace="0" width="23" /><br /> </div> </div> <div class="mva"> <div>Christopher Russell, UCLA</div> </div> </td> </tr> </tbody></table> <!-- E IBOX --> "Ceres and Vesta have been altered much less than other bodies," said Christopher Russell, the Dawn mission's chief scientist. </span></p><p> <span style="font-size:85%;">"The Earth is changing all the time; the Earth hides its history, but we believe that Ceres and Vesta, formed more than 4.6 billion years ago, have preserved their early record." </span></p><p> <span style="font-size:85%;"> <!-- S IBOX --> <table align="right" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="208"> <tbody><tr> <td width="5"><img src="http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/shared/img/o.gif" alt="" border="0" height="1" hspace="0" vspace="0" width="5" /></td> <td class="sibtbg"> <div class="sih"> CERES </div> <div class="o"> <img src="http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/42434000/jpg/_42434466_ceres_nasa_203.jpg" alt="Ceres Image: Nasa" border="0" height="152" hspace="0" vspace="0" width="203" /> </div> <div class="mva"><div class="bull">Biggest object in the asteroid belt</div> <div class="bull">930km (580 miles) across</div> <div class="bull">Discovered in 1801 by Giuseppe Piazzi</div> <div class="bull">Icy layer beneath dusty surface</div> </div> </td> </tr> </tbody></table> <!-- E IBOX --> Ceres is almost spherical and is thought to harbour a layer of water ice some 60 to 120km (40 to 80 miles) thick beneath its rocky surface. </span></p><p> <span style="font-size:85%;">At a meeting of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) last year, Ceres was elevated in status from merely the biggest body in the asteroid belt, to a "dwarf planet" - the same designation now held by Pluto. </span></p><p> <span style="font-size:85%;">While Ceres is a "wet" object, Vesta is devoid of water and appears to have been resurfaced by ancient lava flows. </span></p><p> <span style="font-size:85%;">Dawn will travel to the asteroid belt to carry out a detailed study of their structure and composition, shedding light on their evolution and the conditions in which these objects formed. </span></p><p> <span style="font-size:85%;">The mission's objectives include: </span></p><p> </p><ul class="bulletList"><span style="font-size:85%;"><li>study internal structure and density</li><li>determine size, composition, shape and mass</li><li>examine surface features and craters</li><li>understand the role of water in controlling asteroid evolution</li></span></ul> <p> <span style="font-size:85%;">Dawn's instruments include a gamma ray and neutron spectrometer that can detect the hydrogen from water. </span></p><p> <span style="font-size:85%;">Evidence of whether water still exists on Ceres could come from frost or vapour on the surface. There may even be liquid water under the surface. </span></p><p> <span style="font-size:85%;">The water is thought to have kept Ceres cool throughout its evolution. By contrast, Vesta was hot, melted internally and became volcanic early in its development. </span></p><p> <span style="font-size:85%;"><b>Frozen in time</b> </span></p><p> <span style="font-size:85%;">While Ceres remains closer to the ancient state, Vesta evolved further over its first few millions of years of existence. </span></p><p> <span style="font-size:85%;">Dawn is expected to send back high-resolution images of these worlds, including, perhaps, mountains, canyons, craters and ancient lava flows. </span></p><p> <span style="font-size:85%;"> <!-- S IBOX --> <table align="right" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="208"> <tbody><tr> <td width="5"><img src="http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/shared/img/o.gif" alt="" border="0" height="1" hspace="0" vspace="0" width="5" /></td> <td class="sibtbg"> <div class="sih"> VESTA </div> <div class="o"> <img src="http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/42434000/jpg/_42434468_vesta_nasa_203.jpg" alt="Vesta Image: Nasa" border="0" height="152" hspace="0" vspace="0" width="203" /> </div> <div class="mva"><div class="bull">525km (326 miles) across</div> <div class="bull">Surface has distinctive light and dark areas</div> <div class="bull">Discovered in 1807 by Heinrich Wilhelm Olbers</div> <div class="bull">Pieces of Vesta have fallen to Earth as meteorites</div> </div> </td> </tr> </tbody></table> <!-- E IBOX --> The instruments will help identify minerals on the surface and the elements they contain. </span></p><p> <span style="font-size:85%;">"[Ceres and Vesta] are revealing information that was frozen into their ancient surfaces," said Professor Russell, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). </span></p><p> <span style="font-size:85%;">"By looking at the surface and how it was modified by the bombardment of meteoroids, we will get an idea of what the early conditions of Ceres and Vesta were and how they changed. </span></p><p> <span style="font-size:85%;">"So Dawn is a history trip too. We're going back in time to the early Solar System." </span></p><p> <span style="font-size:85%;">Dawn is scheduled to fly past Mars by April 2009, and after more than four years of travel, the spacecraft will rendezvous with Vesta in 2011. </span></p><p> <span style="font-size:85%;">The spacecraft will orbit Vesta for about nine months, before setting off in 2012 for a three-year cruise to Ceres. </span></p><p> <span style="font-size:85%;">Dawn will rendezvous with its second target in 2015, to conduct studies for at least five months.<!-- E BO --> </span> <br /></p>Sailomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18002477996069582527noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8411130.post-68516183775019976222007-06-16T09:08:00.000+00:002007-06-16T09:09:37.526+00:00Boring Saturn Moons Lively After All - space.comhttp://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/070615_plasma_moons.html<br /><br /><table border="0"><tbody><tr><td colspan="2" style="padding-bottom: 10px;"><img src="http://a52.g.akamaitech.net/f/52/827/1d/www.space.com/template_images/2005/spc_story_linktools3.gif" usemap="#storytools" border="0" height="29" width="366" /><map name="storytools"><area shape="rect" coords="-8,-3,61,106" href="http://www.space.com/php/stf/mailtofriend.php?url=/scienceastronomy/070615_plasma_moons.html"><area shape="rect" coords="61,-3,118,139" href="https://www.space.com/php/members/register.php"><area shape="rect" coords="117,-3,186,61" href="http://del.icio.us/post?url=http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/070615_plasma_moons.html"><area shape="rect" coords="184,-3,250,64" href="http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&url=http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/070615_plasma_moons.html&amp;title=Boring%20Saturn%20Moons%20Lively%20After%20All&bodytext=Streams%20of%20hot%20gas%20swirling%20around%20Saturn%20have%20been%20traced%20to%20two%20icy%20moons%20previously%20thought%20to%20be%20geologically%20dead%20worlds."><area shape="rect" coords="322,-4,492,164" href="http://www.space.com/php/siteinfo/RSSinfo.php"><area shape="rect" coords="249,-4,323,63" href="http://www.space2phone.com/spacecom.do"></map> </td> </tr> <tr> <td align="left" valign="top" width="125"><img src="http://a52.g.akamaitech.net/f/52/827/1d/www.space.com/images/070615_saturn_01.jpg" border="0" /> </td> <td align="left" valign="top" width="355"> <span style="font-family:Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:100%;color:#1b4872;"><b>Boring Saturn Moons Lively After All </b><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:78%;color:#333333;"><b>By <a href="http://www.livescience.com/blogs/author/kerthan">Ker Than</a></b><br />Staff Writer<br /></span></span><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica;font-size:78%;color:#330066;">posted: 15 June 2007<br />06:18 am ET</span><br /> </td> </tr> </tbody></table> <a name="beginstory"></a> <span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;"> <span style="font-family:arial;"> <div class="Section1"> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">Streams of hot gas swirling around Saturn have been traced to two icy moons previously thought to be geologically dead worlds.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">The finding, detailed in the June 14 issue of the journal <i>Nature</i>, suggests Saturn's satellites Tethys and Dione might be volcanically active after all.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">Known as plasma, the gas is composed of negatively charged electrons and positively charged ions, which are atoms with one or more electrons missing. After being ejected from the moons, the charged particles become trapped inside the magnetic field surrounding <a href="http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/070301_saturn_images.html">Saturn</a>, called the magnetosphere.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">A great escape</span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">The particles remain trapped only temporarily, however, because Saturn spins so fast about its axis-a day there is only 10 hours and 46 minutes long-that it drags its magnetosphere and the trapped plasma inside it rapidly through space.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">In 2004, NASA's <a href="http://www.space.com/cassini/">Cassini spacecraft</a> revealed Saturn's rapid rotation flattens the plasma into a disc, and that giant fingers of gas are being thrown out into space from the disc's outer edge. Scientists think cold, fast-spinning gas particles get hurled outwards, away from the center of rotation, by the same centrifugal force that pushes your body against a car door when the vehicle makes a sharp turn. Hotter, more tenuous plasma then rushes in to fill the gaps. The ejected plasma particles get swept away by the sun's own streaming particles, called the solar wind.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">Studying the electron component of the plasma, Jim Burch, an astronomer at the Southwest Research Institute in Texas and a member of the Cassini Plasma Spectrometer team, and his colleagues traced the particles back to the orbits of <a href="http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/070320_saturn_movies.htmlhttp:/www.space.com/scienceastronomy/050930_saturn_moons.html">Tethys and Dione</a>.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">"No matter where we looked, the source distance always mapped to the moons' orbits," Burch told <i>SPACE.com</i>.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">"The implication is that there is a source of plasma on the two moons and that it created a 'donut' [of plasma] that goes around the planet," he added.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">Active worlds?</span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">Prior to the new discovery, the only Saturn moons known to be active were <a href="http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/070612_st_huygens_titan.html">Titan</a> and <a href="http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/070208_enceladus_albedo.html">Enceladus</a>.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">"This new result seems to be a strong indication that there is activity on Tethys and Dione as well," said study team member Andrew Coates of the University of College London.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">Some scientists had suspected Diones might be geologically active because NASA's Pioneer 10 probe detected plasma in the Saturn system in 1979. But those findings were cast into doubt when subsequent observations in the 1980s by the Voyager spacecraft didn't find any evidence of plasma in the moon's orbit.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">"It was a controversy," Burch said.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">The new finding suggests the plasma rings might be transient, Burch said, and that the charged particles don't last long enough for a plasma donut, or "torus," to completely encircle the planet. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">A spacecraft might "go through the part where it's still there," Burch said, "or it may go through the part where the moon's almost come all the way around again and most of [the particles] are gone."</span></p> <ul style="margin-top: 0in;" type="disc"><li class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;"><a href="http://www.space.com/php/multimedia/imagegallery/igviewer.php?imgid=3986&gid=287">Image Gallery: Cassini's Latest Discoveries</a></span></li><li class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;"><a href="javascript:PopupDisplay('mmplayer','id=b040630_saturn_cassini&media=video&mode=play')">Animation of Cassini Saturn Orbital Insertion</a></span></li><li class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;"><a href="javascript:flashvideo_launch('/php/video/player.php?video_id=cassini_crossing');">VIDEO: Cassini's Crossing</a></span></li></ul> </div> </span> </span>Sailomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18002477996069582527noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8411130.post-83349125326315301662007-04-25T11:30:00.000+00:002007-04-25T11:35:09.219+00:00New 'super-Earth' found in space - BBC<a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6589157.stm">http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6589157.stm</a><br /><br /><span style="font-size:78%;">Last Updated: Wednesday, 25 April 2007, 01:00 GMT 02:00 UK</span><br /><br /><strong>The new planet is not much bigger than the Earth</strong><br /><br />Astronomers have found the most Earth-like planet outside our Solar System to date, a world which could have water running on its surface.<br /><br />The planet orbits the faint star Gliese 581, which is 20.5 light-years away in the constellation Libra.<br /><br />Scientists made the discovery using the Eso 3.6m Telescope in Chile.<br /><br />They say the benign temperatures on the planet mean any water there could exist in liquid form, and this raises the chances it could also harbour life.<br /><br />"We have estimated that the mean temperature of this 'super-Earth' lies between 0 and 40 degrees Celsius, and water would thus be liquid," explained Stephane Udry of the Geneva Observatory, lead author of the scientific paper reporting the result.<br /><br />Moreover, its radius should be only 1.5 times the Earth's radius, and models predict that the planet should be either rocky - like our Earth - or covered with oceans."<br /><br />Xavier Delfosse, a member of the team from Grenoble University, added: "Liquid water is critical to life as we know it."<br /><br />He believes the planet may now become a very important target for future space missions dedicated to the search for extra-terrestrial life.<br /><br />These missions will put telescopes in space that can discern the tell-tale light "signatures" that might be associated with biological processes.<br /><br />The observatories would seek to identify trace atmospheric gases such as methane, and even markers for chlorophyll, the pigment in Earth plants that plays a critical role in photosynthesis.<br /><br /><strong>'Indirect' detection</strong><br /><br />The exoplanet - as astronomers call planets around a star other than the Sun - is the smallest yet found, and completes a full orbit of its parent star in just 13 days.<br />Indeed, it is 14 times closer to its star than the Earth is to our Sun.<br />However, given that the host star is smaller and colder than the Sun - and thus less luminous - the planet nevertheless lies in the "habitable zone", the region around a star where water could be liquid.<br /><br />Gliese 581 is much cooler and dimmer than our own SunGliese 581 was identified at the European Southern Observatory (Eso) facility at La Silla in the Atacama Desert.<br /><br />To make their discovery, researchers used a very sensitive instrument that can measure tiny changes in the velocity of a star as it experiences the gravitational tug of a nearby planet.<br />Astronomers are stuck with such indirect methods of detection because current telescope technology struggles to image very distant and faint objects - especially when they orbit close to the glare of a star.<br /><br />The Gliese 581 system has now yielded three planets: the new super-Earth, a 15 Earth-mass planet orbiting even closer to the parent star, and an eight Earth-mass planet that lies further out.<br /><br />Future observatories will study exoplanets for signs of biologyThe latest discovery has created tremendous excitement among scientists.<br /><br />Of the more than 200 exoplanets so far discovered, a great many are Jupiter-like gas giants that experience blazing temperatures because they orbit close to hot stars.<br /><br />The Gliese 581 super-Earth is in what scientists call the "Goldilocks Zone" where temperatures "are just right" for life to have a chance to exist.<br /><br />Commenting on the discovery, Alison Boyle, the curator of astronomy at London's Science Museum, said: "Of all the planets we've found around other stars, this is the one that looks as though it might have the right ingredients for life.<br /><br />"It's 20 light-years away and so we won't be going there anytime soon, but with new kinds of propulsion technology that could change in the future. And obviously we'll be training some powerful telescopes on it to see what we can see," she told BBC News.<br /><br />"'Is there life anywhere else?' is a fundamental question we all ask."Sailomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18002477996069582527noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8411130.post-17445571002147130912007-04-16T18:52:00.000+00:002007-04-16T18:55:09.241+00:00$1bn 'don't have sex' campaign a flop as research shows teenagers ignore lessons - The Guardian<a href="http://education.guardian.co.uk/schoolsworldwide/story/0,,2058181,00.html">http://education.guardian.co.uk/schoolsworldwide/story/0,,2058181,00.html</a><br /><br />· Findings undermine Bush 'keep zipped up' stance<br />· Survey shows 23% given advice chose to ignore it<br /><br /><span style="font-size:78%;">Ed Pilkington in New York</span><br /><span style="font-size:78%;">Monday April 16, 2007</span><br /><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/"><span style="font-size:78%;">The Guardian</span></a><br /><br />It's been a central plank of George Bush's social policy: to stop teenagers having sex. More than $1bn of federal money has been spent on promoting abstinence since 1998 - posters printed, television adverts broadcast and entire education programmes devised for hundreds of thousands of girls and boys.<br /><br />The trouble is, new research suggests that it hasn't worked. At all.<br /><br />A survey of more than 2,000 teenagers carried out by a research company on behalf of Congress found that the half of the sample given abstinence-only education displayed exactly the same predilection for sex as those who had received conventional sex education in which contraception was discussed.<br /><br />Mathematica Policy Research sampled teenagers with an average age of 16 from a cross-section of communities in Florida, Wisconsin, Mississippi and Virginia. Both control groups had the same breakdown of behaviour: 23% in both sets had had sex in the previous year and always used a condom, 17% had sex only sometimes using a condom; and 4% had sex never using one. About a quarter of each group had had sex with three or more partners.<br /><br />Since his days as governor of Texas, George Bush has been a firm advocate of abstinence education programmes, which teach that keeping zipped up is the only certain way to avoid unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, and that to deviate from the norms of human sexual activity is to risk harmful psychological and physical effects. "Abstinence hasn't been given a very good chance, but it's worked when it's tried. That's for certain," he said.<br /><br />But even in 1990s Texas, where Mr Bush spent $10m a year on abstinence education, the state had the fifth highest teen pregnancy rate in the US. Over the past six years he has stepped up the programme to more than $100m a year. He recently braved ridicule by extending it to adults aged 20-29, an age range in which 90% of people are sexually active.<br /><br />In the Mathematica survey, which was released by sex education activists after the health department sat on it, the mean age at which the control group, that had been taught about contraception, lost their virginity was 14.9 years. That seems strikingly low, until you look at the mean age of first sexual experience for the abstinence control group - 14.9 years.<br /><br />In the context of findings like this, health workers and statisticians conclude that it is far better that children have safe sex, with knowledge of and access to contraception, than that they are preached a message of abstinence only to ignore it.<br /><br />Federal funding for abstinence education began as a small part of Mr Clinton's welfare reforms but was stepped up substantially by the Bush administration. Its supporters claim that the fact that though teenaged pregnancies have fallen in the US from a high of 62.1 per 1,000 women aged 15 to 19 in 1991 to 41.1 births per 1,000 in 2004 shows the campaign is working.<br /><br />But the Mathematica findings, building on earlier research, cast that optimism in doubt. Anti-abstinence activists have long argued that the movement is dangerous because it leaves young people exposed to the risk of teen pregnancy and infection because the teaching shuns any mention of condoms or contraception. Of about 19m new STD infections in the US each year, almost half are recorded among people aged 15 to 24.Sailomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18002477996069582527noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8411130.post-83973307413307497332007-04-13T16:16:00.000+00:002007-04-13T16:19:13.005+00:00Monkey DNA Points to Common Human Ancestor - LiveScience<a href="http://www.livescience.com/humanbiology/070412_rhesus_monkeys.html">http://www.livescience.com/humanbiology/070412_rhesus_monkeys.html</a><br /><br /><span style="font-size:78%;">By </span><a href="mailto:cqchoi@nasw.org"><span style="font-size:78%;">Charles Q. Choi</span></a><br /><span style="font-size:78%;">Special to LiveScience</span><br /><span style="font-size:78%;">posted: 12 April 2007</span><br /><span style="font-size:78%;">02:01 pm ET</span><br /><a name="beginstory"></a><br />The first primate to get rocketed into space and to be cloned, the rhesus monkey, has now had its genome sequenced, promising to improve research into health and yield insights into human evolution.<br /><br />Analysis of the monkey's <a href="http://www.livescience.com/dna">DNA</a> sequence has also deepened a few mysteries in our understanding of the biology of primates when it comes to vital parts of our biology, such as the <a href="http://www.livescience.com/humanbiology/ap_050316_chromosomes.html">X chromosome</a>.<br /><br />Rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) are sandy-furred, pink-faced monkeys that live in the region ranging from Afghanistan to northern India, as well as southern China, and are traditionally held as sacred in Hinduism.<br /><br />They have a long history as lab monkeys. For instance, the <a href="http://www.livescience.com/mysteries/070217_blood_types.html">Rh factor</a> in blood discovered in 1937, the presence or absence of which dubs a person's blood type either 'positive' or 'negative,' derives its name from rhesus monkeys. Even now, they are the animals of choice for research into drug addiction and HIV, and roughly two-thirds of all National Institutes of Health-funded primate-related studies use the monkeys. For example, the rhesus monkey Tetra, born in 2000, was the first cloned primate.<br /><br /><strong>93 percent common DNA</strong><br /><br />The sequence of the rhesus macaque's genome will be a powerful tool for research with the monkeys aimed at understanding human biology, said consortium leader Richard Gibbs, director of the Baylor College of Medicine's Human Genome Sequencing Center in Houston.<br />"Right now if you perform an experiment on a person, there's no way that you would think that all people are the same, when it comes to a response to a drug or behavior or anything," Gibbs told LiveScience. <a href="http://www.livescience.com/animalworld/041216_new_macaque.html">Macaques</a> have about the range of diversity when it comes to their genetics, "so being able to understand them on a genetic level will help explain variation in their responses and will allow for smarter experiments that make us more clever at deciphering results."<br /><br />The new analysis of the rhesus monkey genome, conducted by an international consortium of more than 170 scientists, also reveals that humans and the macaques share about 93 percent of their DNA. By comparison, humans and chimpanzees share about 98 to 99 percent of their DNA.<br /><br />The fact that rhesus monkeys are further away from humans in evolution will help illuminate what makes humans different from other apes in ways that chimps, which are so closely related to us, could not, Gibbs said. (Rhesus monkey ancestors diverged from those of humans roughly 25 million years ago, while chimpanzees diverged from our lineage 6 million years ago.)<br /><br />In addition, the researchers identified roughly 200 genes that appear to be key players "in defining the shapes of species, in what makes the primates different from us and each other," Gibbs said. These include genes involved in hair formation, sperm-egg fusion, immune response and cell membrane proteins, findings detailed in the April 13 issue of the journal Science.<br /><br /><strong>Unusual role of X chromosome</strong><br /><br />The research also raised a few surprises. For instance, the monkey's X chromosome showed an unexpectedly large number of times in which its parts got shuffled around. This is consistent with the same mysterious rearrangements seen in the human lineage's X chromosome following the branching off of the chimpanzee, and gives "us new evidence of the unusual role of this sex chromosome in primate <a href="http://www.livescience.com/evolution/">evolution</a>," said researcher Aleks Milosavljevic at the Baylor College of Medicine.<br /><br />Another as yet unexplained phenomenon the sequencing revealed has to do with lumps of DNA known as centromeres, which hold together the two separate strands of DNA that make up a chromosome, acting somewhat like the center of an X. Strangely, nine of the 22 centromeres the monkeys have repositioned themselves on their chromosomes in the last 25 million years. As to why this happened, "no one knows," said researcher Mariano Rocchi at the University of Bari in Italy.<br /><br />The rhesus monkey genome sequence should prove invaluable to biomedical research, said physician scientist Ajit Varki at the University of California at San Diego, who participated in the chimpanzee genome sequencing project. "And if we can get the genome sequences of one representative from each primate lineage, we could reconstitute the ancestral primate genome—what the genome of our common ancestor some 40 to 50 million years ago looked like," he told LiveScience. "That would be an amazing feat."<br /><br /><a href="http://www.livescience.com/humanbiology/top10_missinglinks.html">Top 10 Missing Links </a><br /><a href="http://www.livescience.com/humanbiology/051219_chimps_split.html">When Humans and Chimps Split</a><br /><a href="http://www.livescience.com/humanbiology/ap_050316_chromosomes.html">X Chromosome Key to Differences Between Men and Women</a>Sailomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18002477996069582527noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8411130.post-83049438082039626922007-04-12T10:49:00.000+00:002007-04-12T10:51:45.436+00:00Colorful Worlds: Plants on Other Planets Might Not Be Green - space.com<a href="http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/070411_nongreen_plants.html">http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/070411_nongreen_plants.html</a><br /><br /><span style="font-size:78%;">By </span><a href="http://www.livescience.com/blogs/author/kerthan"><span style="font-size:78%;">Ker Than</span></a><br /><span style="font-size:78%;">Staff Writer</span><br /><span style="font-size:78%;">posted: 11 April 2007</span><br /><span style="font-size:78%;">09:01 am ET</span><br /><a name="beginstory"></a><br />If trees grow on other planets, their leaves might be red, orange or yellow, and not only in autumn, scientists say.<br /><br />Two new studies detailed in the March issue of the journal Astrobiology find that the color of a planet’s photosynthetic organisms depend on the <a href="http://www.space.com/stars/">type of star</a> the world orbits and the makeup of its <a href="http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/070410_water_exoplanet.html">atmosphere</a>.<br /><br />“You have a particular spectrum which is affected by the star’s surface temperature, but once that light comes down through the atmosphere, the atmosphere filters that radiation,” said study team member Victoria Meadows of the <a href="http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/cyber_planets_021210.html">Virtual Planet Laboratory</a> (VPL) at Caltech.<br /><br />For example, our Sun radiates most of its energy in the green part of the visible spectrum. But ozone molecules in the Earth’s atmosphere absorb much of this green light energy, allowing other colors, especially red, to filter through to the ground.<br /><br /><strong>Why plants are green</strong><br /><br />This could explain why chlorophyll absorbs mostly red and blue light and reflects green light, the researchers say.<br /><br />“Ozone filters out some of the blue-green radiation, so there’s less of that available at the surface of the planet,” Meadows told SPACE.com.<br /><br />Alternative explanations have also been proposed for the greenness of plants. One idea, called the <a href="http://www.livescience.com/environment/070410_purple_earth.html">purple Earth hypothesis</a>, states that chlorophyll doesn’t absorb green light because it appeared after another pigment, called retinal, was already present and it had to settle for the “leftover” wavelengths that were not being absorbed.<br /><br />The researchers reached their conclusions after analyzing 12 different kinds of light-sensitive pigments, including chlorophyll, that organisms on Earth use to harness the Sun’s energy.<br />Plant biosignatures<br /><br />The researchers want to use their findings to guide the search for plant life on other worlds. To that end, Meadows’ team at VPL entered the results of the pigment analysis study into a computer simulation that predicts what the light from a distant planet containing <a href="http://www.livescience.com/environment/050214_plankton_space.html">photosynthetic organisms</a> will look like to space telescopes.<br /><br />For example, in addition to reflecting back visible green light, organisms on Earth that use chlorophyll for photosynthesis also reflect near infrared light. This reflected light can be seen from space and is called the “<a href="http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/earth_shine_021031.html">red edge</a>.”<br /><br />The new findings suggest photosynthetic organisms on other planets might not produce a red edge, but some other biosignature instead. The researchers want to figure out what those alternative biosignatures might be.<br /><br />“We’re coming up with rules so that we can say more confidently what is photosynthesis when looking at spectra from these planets,” said study leader Nancy Kiang, a biometeorologist at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York.<br /><br /><strong>Search for life</strong><br /><br />Whether or not scientists find life on distant worlds could depend on these rules.<br />“When we look at these faraway planets, we’re not going to be able to spatially resolve them. We won’t be able to see continents and oceans,” Meadows said. “Everything we must learn about that planet will be in a single dot of light.”<br /><br />Already, the researchers think they can already make certain generalizations about photosynthesis in the universe at large. It’s unlikely, for example, that plants on alien worlds will be blue.<br /><br />“It appears that harvesting blue light is very common across the board for photosynthetic organisms” on Earth, Kiang said in a telephone interview. “I think it is unlikely that anything will be blue.”Sailomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18002477996069582527noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8411130.post-16881575983488009742007-04-08T09:36:00.000+00:002007-04-08T09:37:21.109+00:00Charles Simonyi - Wikipedia<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Simonyi">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Simonyi</a><br />Charles Simonyi (<a title="Hungarian language" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_language">Hungarian</a>: Simonyi Károly; born <a title="September 10" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_10">September 10</a>, <a title="1948" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948">1948</a>) is a <a title="Computer software" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_software">computer software</a> executive who, as head of <a title="Microsoft" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft">Microsoft</a>'s application software group, oversaw the creation of Microsoft's flagship <a title="Microsoft Office" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Office">office applications</a>. He now heads his own company, Intentional Software, with the aim of developing and marketing his concept of <a title="Intentional Programming" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intentional_Programming">Intentional Programming</a>. In 2007, he became the fifth <a title="Space tourism" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_tourism">space tourist</a> and the second <a title="Hungarian" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian">Hungarian</a> in space. His estimated net worth is <a title="United States dollar" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_dollar">$</a>1 billion.<a class="external autonumber" title="http://www.forbes.com/static/bill2005/LIRVMOW.html?passListId=" passyear="2005&amp;passListType=" uniqueid="VMOW&amp;datatype=" href="http://www.forbes.com/static/bill2005/LIRVMOW.html?passListId=10&passYear=2005&amp;passListType=Person&uniqueId=VMOW&amp;datatype=Person" rel="nofollow">[1]</a>Sailomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18002477996069582527noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8411130.post-81351359063633449322007-04-05T09:44:00.000+00:002007-04-05T09:59:58.280+00:00Are men smarter than women?Marilyn vos Savant (born Marilyn Mach on <a title="August 11" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_11">11 August</a> <a title="1946" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1946">1946</a>) is an American magazine columnist, author, lecturer, and playwright who rose to fame through her listing in the <a title="Guinness Book of World Records" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guinness_Book_of_World_Records">Guinness Book of World Records</a> under "Highest IQ".<br /><br />Wikipedia<br /><br /><a href="http://www.parade.com/articles/editions/2005/edition_07-17-2005/featured_0">http://www.parade.com/articles/editions/2005/edition_07-17-2005/featured_0</a><br /><br />Does the disparity between men and women in the sciences say something about their relative intelligence? Marilyn weighs in on this controversial debate.<br /><br /><strong>Are Men Smarter Than Women?<br /></strong><br />Published: July 17, 2005<br />By Marilyn vos Savant<br /><br />Dear Marilyn: How do you view the idea that the gender disparity in the sciences might be due to differences in the inherent aptitudes of women? I’m curious to hear a thoughtful and objective opinion on this controversial subject.—Melissa Hardison, Tallahassee, Fla.<br /><br />A gender gap exists in many occupations, but the disparity in the sciences hits close to one of the scariest marks of all, which is the reason a controversy erupted: Are men smarter than women?<br /><br />The concern unfolds in two questions: 1) Are women handicapped by their upbringing, social pressures, discrimination from men, and more—not just in science but also in other areas? 2) Or are women less bright than men?<br />Some Answers<br />The answer to the first question is too obvious for argument: Yes, and in my opinion, upbringing is the No. 1 cause—not discrimination, conscious or not, from men. Just as significant is the fact (not the problem) that many women are far more interested in their families than outside work, and society clearly approves. Top positions do require time, energy and dedication to goals that may even be selfish.The second question is the hot spot. The average IQ of females is equal to the average IQ of males. But averages can be misleading. In the case of intelligence tests, many more males score at the top and the bottom of the intelligence scale. This could account for the greater number of men in the sciences and—on the other end—in the prison population. So: Does the gender disparity in science give credence to the idea that men are more intelligent than women? My answer is “no,” and these are my reasons:<br /><br />•No evidence indicates that the sciences attract the brightest people. The unspoken assumption that science attracts the smartest people is the foundation upon which we have built the conclusion: “If the sciences are filled with men, men must be smarter, unless women have a good excuse for being absent.” I believe that science—like chess— attracts bright people, but only the ones with certain personality characteristics. Those traits might be more common in men. In the case of chess, the game was developed by males for intellectual sparring with other males. Maybe females simply don’t find the game as fascinating. And note that dictators—who aren’t any stronger than other men—are never women. Maybe females just don’t have whatever it takes to bulldoze their way to this dubious sort of “success.” No one thinks the paucity of women in the field of ruthless domination is because they aren’t smart enough! So why should anyone be shocked to find that most bright people—including women—would flee from the sight of a microscope?!To me, it is clear that the brightest people are spread over all sorts of other occupations. Motherhood is likely among them, and why not? I was a stay-at-home mom while my children were small, and I loved it.<br /><br />•Even professionally administered IQ tests are primitive measures of intelligence. Intelligence tests are fine for practical purposes, but not for analytical ones. Too much unavoidable bias (not prejudice) is present: Any test-maker (not just IQ test-creators) must first develop standards upon which the test-takers will be judged. In other words, to test intelligence, the designer must formulate a definition of intelligence. Now, who could possibly do this?<br /><br />Can Intelligence Be Defined?In my opinion, defining intelligence is much like defining beauty, and I don’t mean that it’s in the eye of the beholder. To illustrate, let’s say that you are the only beholder, and your word is final. Would you be able to choose the 1000 most beautiful women in the country? And if that sounds impossible, consider this: Say you’re now looking at your picks. Could you compare them to each other and say which one is more beautiful? For example, who is more beautiful— Katie Holmes or Angelina Jolie? How about Angelina Jolie or Catherine Zeta-Jones? I think intelligence is like this. So many factors are involved that attempts to measure it are useless. Not that IQ tests are useless. Far from it. Good tests work: They measure a variety of mental abilities, and the best tests do it well. But they don’t measure intelligence itself.Perhaps most convincing of all are these facts from other outposts in the animal kingdom:<br /><br />•Female chimpanzees learn complex tasks as easily as males.<br /><br />•Female gorillas can be taught sign language as well as males.•Female guide dogs are as capable at their work as males.<br /><br />•Female dolphins perform practical jokes as often as males.•Female parrots are able to mime and talk as well as males.<br /><br />•Female rats and mice run mazes just as efficiently as males.<br /><br />Would you prefer to adopt a male puppy because you thought you could teach him more tricks? No, you know better. (And we don’t find more female moths in our light fixtures!) Why should anyone think that human females are an exception?!<br /><br />Who's Smarter?When asked that question, PARADE columnist Marilyn vos Savant and her husband, Dr. Robert Jarvik, instinctively point to each other. Marilyn, of course, was in the Guinness Book for having the highest IQ ever recorded. But Dr. Jarvik—inventor of the Jarvik-7 and Jarvik-2000 artificial hearts, used to support patients with congestive heart failure—is no intellectual lightweight either. What do they talk about over dinner? “Medicine and world affairs are the main topics of discussion,” says Marilyn. “For entertainment, we love music, dance and going to movies.” Both are avid runners but don’t enjoy sports and never play games. Marilyn adds, “Rob is more competitive than I am—but, then again, everybody is!”<br /><br />The infinite variety of our mindsJust a glance at these bright high-achievers—men and women who have made their mark in an array of fields—tells us that intelligence is complex and multi-dimensional. Comparing one to the other is like comparing apples and oranges.<br /><br />Maya Lin Architect<br />Frank Gehry Architect<br />Annie Duke Poker champion<br />Albert Einstein Physicist<br />Annika Sorenstam Golfer<br />Quincy Jones Producer<br />Bette Davis Actress<br />Bill Gates Computer mogul<br />Katharine Graham Newspaper publisher<br />Mike Nichols Director<br />Toni Morrison Author<br />Johnny Carson Talk-show host<br />Marie Curie Chemist<br />Sergey Brin Google co-founder<br />Rosalyn Yalow Nobel laureate/medicine<br />Hayao Miyazaki Animator<br />Antonia Novello Physician<br />Edward Albee Playwright<br />Mary Matalin Political consultant<br />James Carville Political consultant<br />Martha Graham Choreographer<br />Yo-Yo Ma Cellist<br />Dr. Ruth (Westheimer) Sex therapist<br />Dr. Phil (McGraw) TV therapist<br />Allison Fisher Pool champion<br />George S. Patton Jr. Army generalSailomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18002477996069582527noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8411130.post-23629983993633202432007-04-02T15:12:00.000+00:002007-04-02T15:20:06.993+00:00Possible New Mars Caves Targets in Search for Life - space.com<a href="http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/070402_mm_mars_caves.html">http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/070402_mm_mars_caves.html</a><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-size:78%;">By </span><a href="http://www.livescience.com/blogs/author/kerthan"><span style="font-size:78%;">Ker Than</span></a><br /><span style="font-size:78%;">Staff Writer</span><br /><span style="font-size:78%;">posted: 02 April 2007</span><br /><span style="font-size:78%;">08:06 am ET</span><br /><a name="beginstory"></a><br />A Mars-orbiting satellite recently spotted seven dark spots near the planet's equator that scientists think could be entrances to underground caves.<br /><br />The football-field sized holes were observed by Mars Odyssey's Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) and have been dubbed the <a href="http://www.space.com/php/multimedia/imagedisplay/img_display.php?pic=070402_seven_sisters_02.jpg&cap=A+THEMIS+image+showing+entrances+to+possible+Martian+caves%2C+dubbed+the+%22seven+sisters.%22+Clockwise+from+upper-left%3A+Dena%2C+Chloe%2C+Wendy%2C+Annie%25">seven sisters </a>--Dena, Chloe, Wendy, Annie, Abbey, Nikki and Jeanne--after loved ones of the researchers who found them. The potential caves were spotted near a massive Martian volcano, Arisa Mons. Their openings range from about 330 to 820 feet (100 to 250 meters) wide, and one of them, Dena, is thought to extend nearly 430 feet (130 meters) beneath the planet's surface.<br /><br />The researchers hope the discovery will lead to more focused spelunking on Mars.<br />"Caves on Mars could become habitats for future explorers or could be the only structures that preserve evidence of past or present <a href="http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/solarsystem/mars_caves_000321.html">microbial life </a>," said Glenn Cushing of Northern Arizona University, who first spotted the black areas in the photographs.<br /><br />A project here on Earth aims to refine the <a href="http://www.space.com/php/multimedia/imagedisplay/img_display.php?pic=070402_mars_caves_02.jpg&amp;cap=Images+taken+by+THEMIS+show+what+is+possibly+an+opening+to+a+Martian+underground+cave.+%5BA%5D+is+a+combined+visual+and+infrared+shot+of+the+cave+entrance+dur">visual and infrared techniques </a>THEMIS used to find the Martian caves and to also develop robots that can one day enter the caverns and explore them.<br /><br /><strong>Practicing on Earth</strong><br /><br />Called the Earth-Mars Cave Detection Program, the project is preparing to enter phase 2, during which scientists will test their approach in "Mars analogue" sites, terrestrial environments with similarities to Martian landscapes. These sites will include dry, blistering deserts, such as the Mojave in California and the Atacama in Chile, as well as frigid environments like Iceland and Antarctica.<br /><br />During the first phase of the project, the researchers acquired the thermal signatures of a dozen caves in Arizona and New Mexico using an experimental infrared detector, called the Quantum Well Infrared Photodetector (QWIP), flown aboard an airplane.<br /><br />Cave detection using QWIP works by spotting regions in the landscape where temperatures are different from the surroundings. Inside a cave, temperatures are nearly constant due to lack of sunlight. Outside, temperatures fluctuate with the rising and setting of the Sun. At a cave entrance, these two temperature regimes mix together to create a unique thermal signature that, depending on the time of day, can be either warmer or cooler than the surrounding environment.<br /><br />"The caves show up as hotspots in a sea of cold, or as cold spots in a sea of warmth," said study team member Murzy Jhabvala, chief engineer of NASA's Instrument Systems and Technology Center.<br /><br />The data, still being analyzed, look promising. In one series of images, the researchers snapped thermal images of Xenolith Cave in New Mexico over a 24-hour period. The cave opening can be seen clearly in some of the images.<br /><br />"It <a href="http://www.space.com/php/multimedia/imagedisplay/img_display.php?pic=070402_nm_cave_02.jpg&amp;cap=Imagery+of+Xenolith+Cave%2C+in+El+Malpais+National+Monument%2C+New+Mexico+captured+over+a+24+hour+window+by+QWIP.+Credit%3A+JJ+Wynne">jumps out </a>at you," said Jut Wynne, a biospeleologist (cave biologist) with the U.S. Geological Survey and Northern Arizona University. "It lights up like a Christmas tree in the predawn and in the late-night shots. It's a bit more ephemeral during the day shots."<br />In Phase 2, the researchers will tweak their technique to figure out the best wavelengths to use and optimal times during the day for cave hunting. "In so doing, we're going to take these applications and then apply them to an orbiter platform for Mars," Wynne said.<br /><br /><strong>Robotic cave explorers</strong><br /><br />The project team also aims to design robots that can explore caves on Mars after they have been spotted. Natalie Cabrol, a planetary geologist with NASA Ames and the SETI Institute, will be integral to this part of the project.<br /><br />Cabrol is a Mars robot veteran. Before Spirit and Opportunity were sent to Mars, she helped engineers perfect their designs by field-testing the robotic rovers in the Atacama Desert in Chile.<br /><br />The researchers may have to design more than one type of robotic cave explorer. "There are many types of caves," Cabrol said in a telephone interview. "It may be that we come up with one very versatile design ... or we might end up with several designs."<br /><br />If the caves have a relatively simple structure--like lava tubes, which are caves carved by flowing magma and are relatively simple and straight--a rover-type robot might work, Cabrol said. "I would doubt that a rover, equipped as they are now, would do a good job in a cave" with a more complicated geometry, she said.<br /><br /><strong>Open to ideas</strong><br /><br />The researchers are also considering other robotic design possibilities, including the deployment of several miniature robots together into a cave.<br /><br />"You could throw out an array of <a href="http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/051228_microbots.html">microbots </a>in a birdshot approach over an area where you think there is a cave," Wynne told SPACE.com . The microbots could then use sonar or some other method to confirm the presence of a cave and pinpoint its location.<br /><br />Whatever form the team's robotic explorer ultimately takes, it will have to be agile, have some basic sense of self-awareness, sport excellent night vision and have the ability to communicate with one other in some innovative way, since conventional radio communication might not work well in caves, Cabrol said.<br /><br />"We are very much on the starting line on this," she added. "This is very exciting. This is really the time when ideas are flitting all over the place."<br /><br /><a href="http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/solarsystem/mars_caves_000321.html">Future 'Martians' Could Live in Caves </a><br /><a href="http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/051228_microbots.html">Microbot Madness: Hopping Toward Planetary Exploration </a><br /><a href="http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/scitues_marscaves_050308.html">Spelunking on Mars: Caves are Hot Spots in Search for Life </a>Sailomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18002477996069582527noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8411130.post-60307454019793050062007-03-24T06:20:00.000+00:002007-03-24T06:22:08.215+00:00Length of Saturn's Day Remains Unknown, But Now We Know Why We Don't Know - space.com<a href="http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/070322_saturn_moon.html">http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/070322_saturn_moon.html</a><br /><br /><br /><br />Length of Saturn's Day Remains Unknown, But Now We Know Why We Don't Know By <a href="http://www.space.com/php/contactus/feedback.php?r=rb">Robert Roy Britt</a>Senior Science Writerposted: 22 March 200709:54 pm ET<a name="beginstory"></a><br />Strangely, astronomers <a href="http://www.livescience.com/mysteries/070210_saturn_day.html">don't know</a> how long a day is on <a href="http://www.space.com/saturn/">Saturn</a>, because they can't get a firm footing on the problem given the giant planet's gaseous nature.<br />So they have long relied on radio measurements of the ringed planet's magnetic field to help estimate the length of the day. But that doesn't really work either, they <a href="http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/060503_saturn_day.html">realized</a>, so estimates have remained loose. Now the scientists at least have a better handle on this aspect of the problem.<br />Geyser <a href="http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/070208_enceladus_albedo.html">activity</a> from Saturn's small moon <a href="http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/070208_enceladus_albedo.html">Enceladus</a> weighs down the big planet's magnetic field so much that the field rotates more slowly than Saturn itself, new observations reveal. The moon is a mere 310 miles (500 kilometers) wide.<br />Geysers on Saturn's little moon Enceladus are throwing off Saturn's internal clock, making it hard to measure the length of the Saturn day. Credit: NASA/JPL<br />Thought of the Day A day on <a href="http://www.space.com/earth/">Earth</a> is determined by how long it takes the planet to spin once on its axis. That's pretty easy to measure, because Earth's surface is solid. Just sit there for about 24 hours, 3 minutes and 56.55 seconds, on average, and measure the time between two sunrises. (That works today, but eventually we will have more than 24 hours to get this job and others done. A lot more. In a few billion years, <a href="http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/moon_mechanics_0303018.html">a day will last about a month</a>!)—RRB<br />"No one could have predicted that the little moon Enceladus would have such an influence on the radio technique that has been used for years to determine the length of the Saturn day," said Don Gurnett of the University of Iowa.<br />Gurnett is the principal investigator on a radio and plasma wave science experiment on NASA's <a href="http://www.space.com/cassini/">Cassini</a> spacecraft. The idea has been to measure Saturn's rotation by taking its radio pulse. The technique works pretty well on the other giant planets.<br />But the new observations, reported online this week by the journal Science, show that the invisible magnetic field lines, which emanate from Saturn's poles and radiate out like a giant, skeletal pumpkin, slip in relation to the planet's rotation.<br />The slip owes to the collective weight of electrically charged particles that originate in Enceladus' remarkable <a href="http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/070208_enceladus_albedo.html">geysers</a> of water vapor and ice [<a href="http://www.space.com/php/video/player.php?video_id=Enceladus-web">video</a>]. Particles in the geysers encircle Saturn and become electrically charged, forming a disk around the equator of hot gas called plasma.<br />Meanwhile, measurements <a href="http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/060503_saturn_day.html">revealed last year</a> that Saturn's day has gotten about six or eight minutes longer—<a href="http://www.livescience.com/mysteries/070210_saturn_day.html">now roughly 10 hours and 47 minutes</a>—since the 1980s when measured by the <a href="http://www.space.com/spacenews/archive05/Voyager_053005.html">Voyager</a> missions. Nobody suspects the trend to continue forever (meaning the days would just get longer and longer at such a rapid rate), but they also don't know what's going on.<br />Either the geysers on Enceladus are more active now than in the '80s, the astronomers figure, or perhaps there are seasonal variations as Saturn orbits the <a href="http://www.space.com/sun/">Sun</a>, a year that takes more than 29 Earth-years to complete.<br />"One would predict that when the geysers are very active, the particles load down the magnetic field and increase the slippage of the plasma disk, thereby increasing the radio emission period even more," Gurnett said Thursday. "If the geysers are less active, there would be less of a load on the magnetic field, and therefore less slippage of the plasma disk, and a shorter period."<br />"The direct link between radio, magnetic field and deep planetary rotation has been taken for granted up to now," said Michele Dougherty, a researcher at Imperial College London and principal investigator on Cassini's magnetometer instrument. "Saturn is showing we need to think further."<br /><a href="http://www.livescience.com/mysteries/060925_seasons.html">What Causes Earth's Seasons?</a><br /><a href="http://www.space.com/bestimg/?cat=strangest">Top 10 Strangest Things in Space</a><br /><a href="http://www.livescience.com/mysteries/070312_earth_moves.html">How Fast Does Earth Move?</a>Sailomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18002477996069582527noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8411130.post-51202929282771227432007-02-22T09:05:00.000+00:002007-02-22T09:07:28.533+00:00Clouds, But No Water, Detected On Distant Planet - space.comhttp://space.com/scienceastronomy/070221_exoplanet_atmosphere.html<br /><br /><img src="http://a52.g.akamaitech.net/f/52/827/1d/www.space.com/images/070221_hot_jupiter_01.jpg" border="0" /> <span style="font-family:Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:100%;color:#1b4872;"><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:78%;color:#333333;"><b>By <a href="http://www.livescience.com/blogs/author/kerthan">Ker Than</a></b><br />Staff Writer<br /></span></span><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica;font-size:78%;color:#330066;">posted: 21 February 2007<br />01:0</span><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica;font-size:78%;color:#330066;">1 pm ET</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica;font-size:78%;color:#330066;"><br /></span><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;"> <span style="font-family:arial;"> <p class="style1">The most detailed analysis ever of light from the atmospheres of <a href="http://www.space.com/planets/">planets</a> outside our <a href="http://www.space.com/solarsystem/">solar system</a> has turned up no evidence of water but possible hints of clouds, scientists said today.</p> <p class="style1">“We’re getting our first sniffs of air from an alien world,” said David Charbonneau of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. “And what we found surprised us. Or more accurately, what we didn’t find surprised us.”</p> <p class="style1">Using NASA’s infrared <a href="http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/aas_galaxies_040531.html">Spitzer space telescope</a>, Charbonneau and his team studied a so-called <a href="http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/060605_mm_pegasids.html">hot Jupiter</a> planet [<a href="http://www.space.com/php/multimedia/imagedisplay/img_display.php?pic=070221_hot_jupiter_02.jpg&cap=Artist%27s+impression+of+a+cloudy+Jupiter-like+planet+that+orbits+very+close+to+its+fiery+hot+star.+The+Spitzer+Space+Telescope+was+used+to+capture+the+spectrum%2C+or+molecular+fingerprint%2C+of+an+extra-solar+planet+like+this+one.+Credit%3A+NASA%2FJPL-Caltech">image</a>] called HD 189733b. Hot Jupiters are large gas giants like our own <a href="http://www.space.com/jupiter/">Jupiter</a>, but they orbit so close to their parent stars that they are extremely hot. A year on HD 189733b is only 2.2 Earth days long and the planet is a broiling 1,700 degrees Fahrenheit. HD 189733b is located about 60 light years away in the constellation Vulpecula.</p> <p class="style1">The technology to tease apart the light from a distant planet and <a href="http://www.space.com/stars/">star</a> is not available yet, so scientists use a different trick [<a href="http://www.space.com/php/multimedia/imagedisplay/img_display.php?pic=070221_sec_eclipse_02.jpg&amp;cap=This+diagram+illustrates+how+astronomers+using+NASA%27s+Spitzer+Space+Telescope+can+capture+the+elusive+spectra+of+hot-Jupiter+planets.+Subtracting+the+total+light+from+the+star+system+when+the+planet+is+in+front+of+its+star+from+the+light+when+the+planet+is+behind+star+leaves+scientist+with+just+the+spectrum+of+the+planet.+Credit%3A+Credit%3A+NASA%2FJPL-Caltech+">image</a>].</p> <p class="style1">“Instead of separating the [light from the planet and star] in space, we separate them in time,” Charbonneau explained. “We wait for the planet to pass out of view behind the star, and then we measure the brightness of the star very carefully. Then we gather data at any other time, when both the <a href="http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/planet_transit_030106.html">planet and star are in view</a>. If you take their difference, then whatever’s left over has got to be the light from the planet.”</p> <p class="style1">In 2001, Charbonneau’s team used the <a href="http://www.space.com/hubblespacetelescope/">Hubble Space Telescope</a> and a different technique to detect small amounts of sodium in the atmosphere of an exoplanet. The discovery marked the <a href="http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/astronomy/extrasolar_atmosphere_011127-1.html">first time</a> that astronomers had ever detected the atmosphere of a planet orbiting another star.</p> <p class="style1">“Now we’re able to look over many different colors,” Charbonneau explained. “In the past, we had to target this one wavelength and this one feature due to this one atom. It was exciting at the time, but these data that we’re presenting now are much more informative.”</p> <p class="style1">The study by Charbonneau's team is detailed online in the journal <em>Astrophysical Journal Letters</em> . </p> <p class="style1"><strong>No signs of water </strong></p> <p class="style1">After obtaining the light spectrum of HD 189733b, Charbonneau’s team scanned it for tell-tale “fingerprints” of specific molecules.</p> <p class="style1">Theory predicts that hot Jupiters contain large amounts of water vapor and also methane. <a href="http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/planet_formation_041209.html">Planets form</a> from the same material as their stars, and stars like the one HD 189733b orbits contain many different elements, including hydrogen, helium, carbon and oxygen. Therefore, these elements must also be present in the makeup of planets around the star.</p> <p class="style1">On hot Jupiters, there is “so much hydrogen and oxygen that they will react and turn into a water molecule. At those pressures, it’s inevitable,” Charbonneau told <em>SPACE.com</em>.</p> <p class="style1">Similarly, carbon and hydrogen are thought to combine on hot Jupiters to form methane.</p> <p class="style1">However, to the researchers’ great surprise, no signs of either of these two molecules were detected.</p> <p class="style1">“We expected that the planet would appear fainter, due to absorption by water molecules in the atmosphere,” Charbonneau said. “That was a very strong prediction and made by many different groups that had tried to predict what these atmospheres would be like.”</p> <p class="style1"><strong>High Clouds and hidden water</strong></p> <p class="style1">Results obtained by another team suggest the water and methane are present, but hidden by thick clouds.</p> <p class="style1">A team led by Jeremy Richardson of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center also used Spitzer to obtain the spectrum of HD 209458b, another hot Jupiter located about 150 light years away in the constellation Pegasus.</p> <p class="style1">The spectrum Richardson’s team obtained also showed no signs of water or methane, but it did reveal hints of silicate—molecules containing silicon and oxygen. On <a href="http://www.space.com/earth/">Earth</a>, silicates are a major component of rocks. On hot Jupiters, under scorching temperatures, silicates would exist as tiny dust grains that could coalesce to form clouds.</p> <p class="style1">The study by Richardson's team is detailed in the Feb. 22 issue of the journal <em>Nature</em>.</p> <p class="style1">“It might explain why we don’t see the water,” Charbonneau said. “If there is a high cloud deck, it would prevent us looking down into the atmosphere.”</p> <p class="style1">Mark Swain, a researcher at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the leader of another team which independently analyzed HD 209458b, agrees that there are probably clouds on the hot Jupiter but is not convinced the clouds are made of silicate.</p> <p class="style1">“In our view, the silicate case is not proven,” Swain said. “We find [the spectrum] to be consistent with featureless thermal emissions from dust.”</p> <p class="style1">“I think it’s certainly true that we don’t understand the details of what we see,” Richardson said. “The feature that we see is real. Is it possible that something else could cause that feature? Maybe. Maybe a different element. I think it’s probably silicates.”</p> <p class="style1"><strong>Still exciting</strong></p> <p class="style1">Further studies of HD 189733b, HD 209458b and other hot Jupiters are planned to help clear up the mystery.</p> <p class="style1">“Right now, it’s a puzzle,” Charbonneau said. “With a few more puzzle pieces, the picture should become clearer.”</p> <p class="style1">Despite not finding evidence for water on the two hot Jupiters, the ability to do so is itself exciting, said Alan Boss, a planet-formation theorist at the Carnegie Institution of Washington who was not involved in any of the studies.</p> <p class="style1">“This is the first time that we have been able to look for water in the atmosphere of a distant extrasolar planet,” Boss said in an email interview. “The NASA mantra for looking for life on Mars is ‘follow the water’ and the same holds true for extrasolar planets. Looking for water will be one of the main goals of the <a href="http://www.space.com/searchforlife/exoplanet_missions_001130_5.html">Terrestrial Planet Finder</a> (TPF), and this new result just whets our appetite for what is to come when TPF flies.”</p> <ul class="style1" type="disc"><li><a href="http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/061012_fireice_planet.html">Distant Planet is Half Fire, Half Ice</a> </li><li><a href="http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/070109_superwind_planets.html">Giant Planets Pack Supersonic Winds</a></li><li><a href="http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/astronomy/new_planets_000804.html">Astronomers Discover Bundle of Extrasolar Planets</a> </li><li><a href="http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/astronomy/extrasolar_atmosphere_011127-1.html">First Detection Made of an Extrasolar Planet's Atmosphere</a> </li></ul> </span> </span>Sailomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18002477996069582527noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8411130.post-73378809039627292342007-02-19T10:36:00.000+00:002007-02-19T10:42:32.937+00:00"Gravity Tractor," Super Telescopes Enlisted to Battle Killer Asteroids - National Geographicshttp://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/02/070217-asteroid-impact_2.html<br /><br /> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 8pt;">Elizabeth Svoboda in <st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on">San Francisco</st1:City>, <st1:state st="on">California</st1:State></st1:place><br />for <a href="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/">National Geographic News</a><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 8pt;">February 17, 2007<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span style="">A giant asteroid named Apophis could be on a trajectory to careen into Earth in 2036. That was the prediction NASA scientists made in 2004, suggesting a 1 in 37 chance that the space rock would hit our planet. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span style="">The danger has since receded—the revised likelihood that Apophis will hit Earth is 1 in 45,000. But the close call has galvanized efforts among scientists to predict and hopefully prevent a potentially apocalyptic impact.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style=""><a href="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/bigphotos/97761062.html"> <img class="photo" src="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/images/thumbs/070217-asteroid-impact_170.jpg" alt="Asteroid impact image" border="0" height="136" width="170" /> </a> </p><p> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style=""><br /><span style=""> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span style=""><a href="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/bigphotos/97761062.html"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><!--[if gte vml 1]><v:shapetype id="_x0000_t75" coordsize="21600,21600" spt="75" preferrelative="t" path="m@4@5l@4@11@9@11@9@5xe" filled="f" stroked="f"> <v:stroke joinstyle="miter"> <v:formulas> <v:f eqn="if lineDrawn pixelLineWidth 0"> <v:f eqn="sum @0 1 0"> <v:f eqn="sum 0 0 @1"> <v:f eqn="prod @2 1 2"> <v:f eqn="prod @3 21600 pixelWidth"> <v:f eqn="prod @3 21600 pixelHeight"> <v:f eqn="sum @0 0 1"> <v:f eqn="prod @6 1 2"> <v:f eqn="prod @7 21600 pixelWidth"> <v:f eqn="sum @8 21600 0"> <v:f eqn="prod @7 21600 pixelHeight"> <v:f eqn="sum @10 21600 0"> </v:formulas> <v:path extrusionok="f" gradientshapeok="t" connecttype="rect"> <o:lock ext="edit" aspectratio="t"> </v:shapetype><v:shape id="_x0000_i1025" type="#_x0000_t75" alt="Asteroid impact image" href="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/bigphotos/97761062.html" style="'width:127.5pt;height:102pt'" button="t"> <v:imagedata src="file:///C:\DOCUME~1\t\LOCALS~1\Temp\msohtml1\01\clip_image001.jpg" href="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/images/thumbs/070217-asteroid-impact_170.jpg"> </v:shape><![endif]--><!--[if !vml]--></span></a>A slate of new proposals for addressing the asteroid menace was presented today at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in <st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on">San Francisco</st1:City></st1:place>. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span style="">The aim, researchers said, is to defend the planet from an asteroid strike such as the one that slammed into <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Mexico</st1:place></st1:country-region>'s Yucatán peninsula some 65 million years ago—a cataclysmic <a href="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/11/061130-dinosaur-asteroid.html">event that many scientists think caused the extinction of the dinosaurs</a>. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span style="">"There are 127 near-Earth objects we know about that have some chance of hitting us," said Russell Schweickart, a former Apollo astronaut and founder of the Houston, Texas-based Association of Space Explorers. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span style="">"You have to act when it looks like things are going to happen. If you wait until you're certain, it's going to be too late." <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style=""><b><span style="">"Gravity Tractor," Super Scopes</span></b><span style=""> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span style="">Edward Lu, an astronaut and physicist at NASA, has developed a novel way to nudge off course any asteroids that appear to be headed for Earth. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span style="">Lu's proposed "gravitational tractor" is a spacecraft so massive—up to 20 tons (18 metric tons)—that it could divert an asteroid's path just by thrusting its engines in a specific direction while in the asteroid's vicinity. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span style="">"You don't aim your engines at the asteroids, you aim them to the side," he said. "That enables you to tow the asteroid just by the force of gravity." <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span style="">In order for the gravitational tractor to work effectively, Lu said, international authorities would have to decide to use it long before an anticipated impact. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span style="">"You want many years or even decades of notice," he said. "It's like billiards—when you make a slight change before the bank shot, it creates a big change [in where the ball goes]." <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span style="">Lu thinks other proposed interventions, such as detonating a nuclear bomb near an asteroid, would create more danger for Earth than they would avert. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <ul type="disc"><li class="MsoNormal" style=""><span style="">"There's a possibility of breaking chunks off, and even small chunks could cause tremendously bad effects," he said. <o:p></o:p></span></li></ul> <p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span style="font-size: 8pt;">(See an interactive feature on <a href="http://www.nationalgeographic.com/asteroids/">asteroid impacts on Earth</a>.) <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span style="">Scientists also described two massive new survey-telescope projects to detect would-be killer asteroids. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span style="">One, dubbed Pan-STARRS, is slated to begin operation later this year. The project will use an array of four 6-foot-wide (1.8-meter-wide) telescopes in <st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">Hawaii</st1:place></st1:State> to scan the skies. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span style="">The other program, the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope in <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Chile</st1:place></st1:country-region>, will use a giant 27.5-foot-wide (8.4-meter-wide) telescope to search for killer asteroids. This telescope is scheduled for completion sometime between 2010 and 2015. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span style="font-size: 8pt;">(Related news: <a href="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/01/070110-google-space.html">"Google Partners With High-Tech Telescope to Map Universe"</a> [January 10, 2007].) <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span style="">When both of these new telescope projects go online, they will be able to detect objects much fainter than anything today's scopes pick up, the scientists said. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span style="">David Morrison, an astronomer at NASA's <st1:place st="on"><st1:placename st="on">Ames</st1:PlaceName> <st1:placename st="on">Research</st1:PlaceName> <st1:placetype st="on">Center</st1:PlaceType></st1:place>, said that "the rate of discoveries is going to ramp up. We're going to see discoveries being made at 50 to 100 times the current rate." <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span style="">"You can expect asteroids like Apophis [to be found] every month." <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style=""><b><span style="">International Plans</span></b><span style=""> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span style="">The influx of new discoveries will likely increase public anxieties about the asteroid threat, which makes a concrete scientific plan of action all the more necessary, the experts said. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span style="">In the wake of the Apophis incident, many lawmakers have become convinced of the importance of devoting more attention to asteroid searches. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span style="">In 2005 the U.S. Congress amended the Space Act to entrust NASA with the specific responsibility to "detect, track, catalog and characterize" asteroids and other near-Earth objects. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span style="">But to some scientists, these efforts aren't enough. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span style="">Schweickart, the former astronaut, thinks the United Nations needs to draft a treaty detailing standardized international measures that will be carried out in response to any asteroid threat. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span style="">His group, the Association of Space Explorers, has started building a team of scientists, risk specialists, and policymakers to draft such a treaty, which will be submitted to the UN for consideration in 2009. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span style="">Schweickart believes the uncertainty involved in predicting the path of an incoming asteroid makes a coordinated global response essential. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span style="">"When you look at where something like Apophis is going to hit, it's not going to be a single point, it's going to be a line of potential points," he said. "Therefore this is going to be inherently an international decision. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span style="">"We can't prevent a hurricane or a tornado," he continued. "But we can prevent an asteroid impact, and we can do it by slightly reshaping the solar system to enhance the survival of life on Earth. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span style="">"If we don't do that, we're not that far past the dinosaurs." <o:p></o:p></span></p>Sailomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18002477996069582527noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8411130.post-90847033751961856392007-02-17T09:39:00.000+00:002007-02-17T09:40:44.112+00:00As death increases, compassion recedes - LiveSciencehttp://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17186270<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /></span><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;" >Study finds mass death fails to spur emotion the way one tragedy can</span> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p><br /><span style="font-size: 8pt;">By Sara Goudarzi<o:p></o:p><br />Staff Writer <o:p></o:p><br />Updated: 11:56 a.m. ET Feb. 16, 2007<o:p></o:p></span><br /><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="textbodyblack">SAN FRANCISCO - While a person's accidental death reported on the evening news can bring viewers to tears, mass killings reported as statistics fail to tickle human emotions, a new study finds.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="textbodyblack"><span id="byLine"></span>The Internet and other modern communications bring atrocities such as killings in <st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on">Darfur</st1:City>, <st1:country-region st="on">Sudan</st1:country-region></st1:place> into homes and office cubicles. But knowledge of these events fails to motivate most to take action, said Paul Slovic, a <st1:place st="on"><st1:placetype st="on">University</st1:PlaceType> of <st1:placename st="on">Oregon</st1:PlaceName></st1:place> researcher. <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="textbodyblack"><span id="byLine"></span>People typically react very strongly to one death but their emotions fade as the number of victims increase, Slovic reported here yesterday at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. </p> <p class="textbodyblack">"We go all out to save a single identified victim, be it a person or an animal, but as the numbers increase, we level off," Slovic said. "We don't feel any different to say 88 people dying than we do to 87. This is a disturbing model, because it means that lives are not equal, and that as problems become bigger we become insensitive to the prospect of additional deaths."<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="textbodyblack"><span id="byLine"></span>Human insensitivity to large-scale human suffering has been observed in the past century with genocides in <st1:country-region st="on">Armenia</st1:country-region>, the <st1:country-region st="on">Ukraine</st1:country-region>, Nazi Germany and <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Rwanda</st1:place></st1:country-region>, among others. <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="textbodyblack"><span id="byLine"></span>"We have to understand what it is in our makeup — psychologically, socially, politically and institutionally — that has allowed genocide to go unabated for a century," Slovic said. "If we don't answer that question and use the answer to change things, we will see another century of horrible atrocities around the world."<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="textbodyblack"><span id="byLine"></span>Slovic previously studied this phenomenon by presenting photographs to a group of subjects. In the first photograph eight children needed $300,000 to receive medical attention in order to save their lives. In the next photograph, one child needed $300,000 for medical bills. <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="textbodyblack"><span id="byLine"></span>Most subjects were willing to donate to the one and not the group of children. <o:p></o:p></p> <span id="byLine"></span>Sailomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18002477996069582527noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8411130.post-76974775605580293232007-02-16T08:28:00.000+00:002007-02-16T08:32:49.822+00:00Live EarthA major event yesterday was a press conference announcing the organization of a massive global warming awareness event called "Live Earth".<br /><br />"<b>Live Earth</b> is a series of concerts planned for <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_7" title="July 7">July 7</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007" title="2007">2007</a> (7/7/07) to raise awareness of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming" title="Global warming">global climate change</a>. An anouncement was made on <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/February_15" title="February 15">February 15</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007" title="2007">2007</a> by former U.S. Vice President <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Gore" title="Al Gore">Al Gore</a> and other activists as part of a campaign called <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Save_Our_Selves_%28environmental_campaign%29&amp;action=edit" class="new" title="Save Our Selves (environmental campaign)">Save Our Selves</a> (SOS). The concert series is modeled after the 1985 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Live_Aid" title="Live Aid">Live Aid</a> concerts and 2005's <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Live8" title="Live8">Live8</a>." (Wikipedia)<br /><br />Here is the announcement's video<br />http://liveearth.msn.com/?GT1=9033<br /><br />SailomSailomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18002477996069582527noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8411130.post-66436630597962223872007-02-12T12:39:00.000+00:002007-02-08T20:58:51.808+00:00US claims against Iran: why now? - BBC Newshttp://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6353489.stm<br /><span class="ds"><span class="lu"></span></span><br /><div class="mvb"><img src="http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/img/v3/dot_629.gif" alt="" border="0" height="1" hspace="0" vspace="0" width="629" /></div> <div class="mvtb"><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="416"><tbody><tr> <td width="213"><br /></td> <td width="203"><br /></td> </tr></tbody></table></div> <table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="629"><tbody><tr> <td colspan="3"> <br /></td> </tr> <tr> <td valign="top" width="416"> <span style="font-size:85%;"> <!-- S BO --> <!-- S IBYL --> </span><div class="mvb"> <span style="font-size:85%;"> <table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="416"> <tbody><tr> <td valign="bottom"> <div class="mvb"> <b>Analysis</b><br /> <span class="byl"> By Paul Reynolds </span> <br /> <span class="byd"> World affairs correspondent, BBC news website </span> </div> </td> </tr> </tbody></table><img src="http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/shared/img/999999.gif" alt="" border="0" height="1" hspace="0" vspace="0" width="416" /><br /> </span></div> <!-- E IBYL --> <p> <span style="font-size:85%;"><b>In October 2005, the then British ambassador to Iraq William Patey told reporters in London that Iran had been supplying technology used to kill British troops in Basra.</b> </span></p><p> <!-- S IIMA --> <span style="font-size:85%;"> <table align="right" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="203"> <tbody><tr><td> <div> <img src="http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/42561000/jpg/_42561899_efp203.jpg" alt="US photo of bomb damage from an EFP - explosively formed penetrator" border="0" height="152" hspace="0" vspace="0" width="203" /> <div class="cap">US photo of bomb damage from an EFP - explosively formed penetrator</div> </div> </td></tr> </tbody></table> <!-- E IIMA --> </span></p><p> <span style="font-size:85%;">He said he had complained to the Iranian ambassador in Baghdad about it. </span></p><p> <span style="font-size:85%;">The claim was that elements connected to the Shia militia in the south, the Mehdi army, had been using specially shaped charges, in which the force of the explosion is directed narrowly in one direction, thereby enabling it to penetrate armoured vehicles. </span></p><p> <span style="font-size:85%;">No evidence was produced, other than a suggestion that the Iranian-supported Lebanese group Hezbollah had also used such charges, so the common origin had to be Iran. </span></p><p> <span style="font-size:85%;">US officials have made similar claims over the last year. General George Casey, the then US commander in Iraq, said so in June 2006. </span></p><p> <span style="font-size:85%;"><b>Evidence</b> </span></p><p> <span style="font-size:85%;">In a briefing in Baghdad on Sunday, US military and intelligence officers finally laid out their evidence. </span></p><p> <span style="font-size:85%;">The question has to be asked as to why it has taken at least 14 months for this to happen. </span></p><p> <span style="font-size:85%;">So, why now? </span></p><p> <span style="font-size:85%;">If you take the claims at face value, the reason is that only now has the evidence become substantial enough to be made public. The number of attacks is said to have grown as well, so that is another explanation put forward for going public now. </span></p><p> <span style="font-size:85%;">But there are other possibilities as well. </span></p><p> <span style="font-size:85%;"><b>Softening up?</b> </span></p><p> <span style="font-size:85%;">For a start, the fear among some is that the US is softening up world opinion for an attack on Iran. Such an attack would be aimed at Iran's nuclear facilities. </span></p><p> <span style="font-size:85%;">At the moment, the US lacks a casus belli and by claiming that Iran is responsible for killing USA troops, it could be laying the groundwork for a 'self-defence' justification. </span></p><p> <span style="font-size:85%;"> <!-- S IBOX --> <table align="right" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="208"> <tbody><tr> <td width="5"><img src="http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/shared/img/o.gif" alt="" border="0" height="1" hspace="0" vspace="0" width="5" /></td> <td class="sibtbg"> <div class="o"> <img src="http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/42560000/jpg/_42560037_ap203indexbaghdad.jpg" alt="Vehicle burning after roadside bombing" border="0" height="152" hspace="0" vspace="0" width="203" /> </div> <div class="o"> <img src="http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/img/v3/inline_dashed_line.gif" alt="" border="0" height="1" hspace="0" vspace="2" width="203" /><br /> </div> <div class="miiib"> <!-- S ILIN --> <div class="arr"> <a class="" href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/guides/456900/456995/html/default.stm"><b>Iraq violence in figures</b></a> </div> <!-- E ILIN --> </div> </td> </tr> </tbody></table> <!-- E IBOX --> </span></p><p> <span style="font-size:85%;">The new chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Senator John Rockefeller said recently: "To be quite honest, I'm a little concerned that it's Iraq again." </span></p><p> <span style="font-size:85%;">There is also the fact that the US is launching its 'surge' policy of moving extra troops into Baghdad. These claims are being made against Shia militias, including the Mehdi army, one of the main targets of the latest policy. </span></p><p> <span style="font-size:85%;">Blaming Shia Iran for supporting Iraqi Shia militias makes it easier for the US to sell that policy at home and abroad. </span></p><p> <span style="font-size:85%;"><b>Blaming others</b> </span></p><p> <span style="font-size:85%;">Then there is the old tactic of blaming someone else for your own problems. </span></p><p> <span style="font-size:85%;">Many people will not distinguish between the Shia militias that Iran is said to supply - and which have ties to the Iraqi government - and the Sunni insurgents who have been the cause of much of the violence. </span></p><p> <span style="font-size:85%;">The allegedly Iranian supplied bombs are said to have caused the deaths of 170 American soldiers, but overall 2497 soldiers have been killed in hostile incidents, most of them at hands of the Sunnis. </span></p><p> <span style="font-size:85%;">The claim serves the purpose of helping to lay the blame for the whole insurgency at Iran's door. </span></p><p> <span style="font-size:85%;">There are also other possible reasons for this timing. </span></p><p> <span style="font-size:85%;"><b>Council deadline</b> </span></p><p> <span style="font-size:85%;">The UN Security Council has laid down that Iran must suspend its enrichment of uranium by 21 February. If it does not, and if the International Atomic Energy Agency confirms this, the resolution says that further economic sanctions will be considered. </span></p><p> <span style="font-size:85%;"> <!-- S IBOX --> <table align="right" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="208"> <tbody><tr> <td width="5"><img src="http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/shared/img/o.gif" alt="" border="0" height="1" hspace="0" vspace="0" width="5" /></td> <td class="sibtbg"> <div> <div class="mva"> <img src="http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/img/v3/start_quote_rb.gif" alt="" border="0" height="13" width="24" /> <b>The officials said such an assertion [that Iran was the source of components for the explosive devises] was an inference based on general intelligence assessments</b> <img src="http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/img/v3/end_quote_rb.gif" alt="" align="right" border="0" height="13" vspace="0" width="23" /><br /> </div> </div> <div class="mva"> <div>New York Times</div> </div> </td> </tr> </tbody></table> <!-- E IBOX --> The US is preparing to argue for tougher sanctions, so making claims against Iran over Iraq might help it in its arguments that Iran is a threat. </span></p><p> <span style="font-size:85%;">On the wider front, the Bush administration is engaged in a campaign against the Iranian government in order to isolate it and eventually maybe see its end under internal pressure from the Iranian people. </span></p><p> <span style="font-size:85%;">The latest claims against Iran could be a part of that campaign. </span></p><p> <span style="font-size:85%;"><b>The claims</b> </span></p><p> <span style="font-size:85%;">What of the claims themselves? </span></p><p> <span style="font-size:85%;">They are based on physical evidence, from bombs and their effects. The bombs now even have their own name and acronym - explosively formed penetrators or EFPs. </span></p><p> <span style="font-size:85%;">Previously they had been lumped in the generalised description of IEDs - improvised explosive devices. </span></p><p> <span style="font-size:85%;">The implication is that now they are less improvised and more planned. </span></p><p> <span style="font-size:85%;">They are said to be provided by Iran in kit form and to be smuggled across the often-open border. </span></p><p> <span style="font-size:85%;">However the officials who presented the evidence could not make a direct link to Iran. </span></p><p> <span style="font-size:85%;">"The officials said such an assertion was an inference based on general intelligence assessments," stated the New York Times. </span></p><p> <span style="font-size:85%;">They did make much of the detention in Irbil of five Iranians who were said to be members of the Quds force of the Iranian revolutionary Guards. </span></p><p> <span style="font-size:85%;">The Quds (the word means Jerusalem) force was said by the US officials to be controlled directly by the "highest levels of the Iranian government". </span></p><p> <span style="font-size:85%;">That last statement is significant in that the US is now making a charge against the Iranian government itself, not just against its agents. </span></p><p> <span style="font-size:85%;"><b>Scepticism</b> </span></p><p> <span style="font-size:85%;">Against the inference that this all comes from Iran is the concept that Iraqis themselves would be capable of copying a design and therefore do not need to get bombs from Iran. </span></p><p> <span style="font-size:85%;">And there have been a number of news reports over the last year expressing scepticism, even among military personnel, about the link to Iran. </span></p><p> <span style="font-size:85%;">The Washington Post reported last October that British troops in the south doubted the claim. </span></p><p> <span style="font-size:85%;">A year ago, the London Times said that British officers in Basra had stopped making any such claim, saying only that the technology matched bomb-making found elsewhere in the Middle East, including Lebanon and Syria. </span></p><p> <span style="font-size:85%;"><br /></span></p><p> <span style="font-size:85%;"><a href="mailto:Paul.Reynolds-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk"><i>Paul.Reynolds-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk</i></a> </span></p></td></tr></tbody></table>Sailomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18002477996069582527noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8411130.post-44250036911875484972007-02-07T10:56:00.000+00:002007-02-07T11:01:49.242+00:00Couple still hugging 5,000 years on - MSNBChttp://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17011786<br /><br /><a id="linkImgRelatedPhotos"><img src="http://msnbcmedia3.msn.com/j/msnbc/Components/Photos/070206/070206_embrace_vmed_1p.widec.jpg" style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0);" alt="Image: Eternal embrace" border="0" hspace="0" vspace="0" /></a><div class="credit aR"><span style="font-size:78%;">Enrico Pajello / Reuters</span></div><div class="caption" style="padding: 10px 0pt 0pt;"><span style="font-size:78%;">A pair of human skeletons lie in an eternal embrace at an Neolithic archaeological dig site near Mantova, Italy. Archaeologists in northern Italy believe the couple was buried 5,000-6,000 years ago, their arms still wrapped around each other in an eternal embrace.</span><br /><br /><br /></div>Sailomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18002477996069582527noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8411130.post-6212464317088367702007-02-08T20:56:00.000+00:002007-02-07T11:01:48.933+00:00Thai woman tells of 25-year detour after catching wrong bus - AFPhttp://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070208/od_afp/thailandmissingoffbeat<br /><br /><div class="storyhdr"> <p><span>by Rapee Mama </span><em class="timedate">Thu Feb 8, 2:55 AM ET</em> </p> </div> <p>DUSONGYO, Thailand (AFP) - A Thai mother who was lost for 25 years after catching the wrong bus home has spoken of her ordeal after being reunited with her family thanks to simple song.<br /></p><br /><p>The last time Jaeyaena Beuraheng saw her seven children was in 1982 when she left south Thailand on one of her regular shopping trips across the border to nearby Malaysia.</p> <p>She never returned, and police later told her family that she had apparently been killed in a traffic accident.</p> <p>In fact, Jaeyaena had simply taken the wrong bus home -- an error that would have been easy to fix except that she only speaks the local dialect of Malay known as Yawi, according to officials at the homeless shelter where the 76-year-old has lived for two decades.</p> <p>"I didn't tell anybody where I was going on that day, because I went there quite often," she told AFP, crying as she spoke.</p> <p>She was heading home from her shopping trip when she mistakenly hopped on a bus to Bangkok, some 1,150 kilometers (700 miles) north of her home in Narathiwat province.</p> <p>In Bangkok, unable to read Thai and speaking a language few Thais can understand, she again took a wrong bus, this time to Chiang Mai, another 700 kilometers (430 miles) further north.</p> <p>There she ended up as a beggar for five years, until she was sent to a homeless shelter in the central Thai province of Phitsanulok in 1987.</p> <p>"I thought I would die in Phitsanulok. I thought about running away many times, but then I worried I would not be able to make it home. I really missed my children," Jaeyaena said.</p> <p>Officials at the shelter told AFP that she was known as "Auntie Mon," because her speech sounded similar to the language of ethnic Mon living along the border with Myanmar.</p> <p>But still no one could understand her, until last week when three health students from Narathiwat arrived on an exchange program to research the problem of homelessness at the shelter.</p> <p>She sang a song for the visitors, one that the staff at the shelter had often heard but did not understand.</p> <p>"She sang her same old song, one that nobody could understand until those three students from Narathiwat told us that she was sing in Yawi, a Malay dialect," the official said.</p> <p>"So we asked them to talk to her and find out if she had relatives," official said.</p> <p>Jaeyaena told the students that she had a Malaysian husband and seven children, recounting her entire story of the bus and how she had become lost in northern Thailand.</p> <p>Her shocked family sent her youngest son and her eldest daughter to meet her and bring her home on Tuesday, the official said.</p> <p>"She remembered all of her children's names. But at first she couldn't recognise her youngest son, but she recognised her eldest daughter," said the official, who was at their reunion.</p> <p>Her children took her back to their family home in Dusongyo village, in a remote corner of Narathiwat, where her children and grandchildren were still hugging and kissing her two days after her return.</p>Sailomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18002477996069582527noreply@blogger.com0